how capable
he was of outshining them all; or, to speak in less metaphorical
phrase, he found among the less distinguished literary persons who
haunted the tables of the great, a degree of ignorance on subjects of
general science, a slavishness of demeanour, and a petty jealousy,
which he could not but despise, and which it required very little
penetration to perceive that the great man despised also. He soon
acquired, therefore, a confidence in his own powers, and a conscious
respect for, I had almost said pride in, the rectitude of his
feelings, to which, till now, he had been an entire stranger. And if
such was his success with the men, his conquest over his own timidity,
in the presence of women, struck him with yet greater surprise. He who
had been accustomed to blush and look down before a peasant girl,
presently found himself able to gaze steadily into the eyes of a noble
matron or maiden, undazzled by the jewelled coronet upon her head, or
yet more brilliant charms in which nature and art had arrayed her
brow, and neck, and bosom. The witchery of woman in all her
loveliness, instead of, as he had often imagined, causing his heart to
sink, and his cheek to burn, and his tongue to be dumb in his mouth,
awoke the latent powers of his nature--it thrilled his heart with
exulting admiration, and filled his eyes with a bold, steady radiance,
and poured from his lips the eloquence which female loveliness can
alone call forth. His nature was changed--that is, the external
development of his nature, for his heart remained the same; and often,
amid crowded assemblies and rich peals of concerted music, it called
on his imagination to portray the old solitary shepherd, amid the
hills of his boyhood, or to recall the simple strains which his father
had taught him to play upon the rude Scottish pipe.

At the period to which we refer, the literary society of Edinburgh was
by no means distinguished for its abstemiousness. A "good" fellow, and
a clever one, were almost synonymous terms. Sir Walter Scott, in his
novel of "Guy Mannering," has matchlessly described the convivial
habits of the Scottish advocates: the habits of the whole literary
society of Edinburgh were pretty similar. Why should I detail the
circumstances of William's seduction from sobriety? The example of
those whom he had been accustomed to admire, respect, and love; the
gay sallies of his younger associates; the witchery of the society of
genius; the flowing f