ed to be highly
polished and melodious, but something too mystical in meaning for the
understanding of an every-day world; with music, whereof he was
conceded an interpreter of no mean order.

In fact the worship of his soul might have been said to be the
Beautiful in the abstract--the Beautiful in all its manifestations
which include Justice, Harmony, Truth, and Kindliness--the one
indispensable element of his physical happiness, the Beautiful in the
concrete.

This is saying that Adrian Landale, for all his array of definite
accomplishments, which might have been a never-failing source of
interest in an easy existence, was fitted in a singularly unfortunate
manner for the life into which one sudden turn of fortune's wheel
unexpectedly launched him.

During the short halcyon days of his opening independence, however, he
was able to make himself the centre of such a world as he would have
loved to live in. He was not, of course, generally popular, either at
college or at home; nor yet in town, except among that small set in
whose midst he inevitably found his way wherever he went; his
inferiors in social status perhaps, these chosen friends of his; but
their lofty enthusiasms were both appreciative of and congenial to his
own. Most of them, indeed, came in after-life to add their names to
England's roll of intellectual fame, partly because they had that in
them which Adrian loathed as unlovely--the instinct and will of
strife, partly; it must be added, because they remained free in their
circumstances to follow the lead of their nature. Which freedom was
not allotted to him.

* * * * *

On one magnificent frosty afternoon, early in the year 1794, the
London coach deposited Adrian Landale in front of the best hostelry in
Lancaster, after more than a year's separation from his family.

This separation was not due to estrangement, but rather to the
instigation of his own sire, Sir Thomas--a gentleman of the "fine old
school"--who, exasperated by the, to him, incomprehensible and
insupportable turn of mind developed by his heir (whom he loved well
enough, notwithstanding, in his own way), had hoped, in good
utilitarian fashion, that a prolonged period of contact with the
world, lubricated by a plentiful supply of money, might shake his "big
sawney of a son" out of his sickly-sentimental views; that it would
show him that _gentlemen's_ society--and, "by gad, ladies' too"--was
not a thi