school, he could never satisfactorily
interpret. For a long period he fondly cherished the memory of
Bartholdy, and this feeling was prolonged by the knife, which, from
habit, he continued to carry about him, even when the lapse of time had
reconciled him to the loss of his early friend, and his riper judgment
told him that that friend had unworthily imposed upon his credulity, and
that the consequences of their exclusive intimacy still exercised a
pernicious influence upon his character and his happiness.

About three years after the disappearance of Bartholdy, the guardians of
Florian, who had been an orphan from infancy, removed him from the
seminary, and placed him as a law-student at the University of D.; but
here again, although advantageously introduced and recommended, he found
himself a stranger, unheeded, and desolate. His timid and now invincible
reserve, which prevented all advances on his part towards a frank and
social communion with his fellow-students, chilled that disposition to
cultivate his acquaintance, which his graceful person and intelligent
physiognomy had excited; while his hesitating indecision, at every
trivial and commonplace incident, made him ridiculous to the few who had
been won, by his prepossessing exterior, to occasional intercourse.
Thus, amidst numbers of his own age and pursuit, and in the dense
population of a city, the timid Florian continued as deficient as a
child in all practical acquaintance with society. Without a single
friend or associate, he acquired the habits of a solitary recluse; and,
yielding supinely to what now appeared to him his destiny, he became
anxious, disconsolate, and misanthropic. Conscious, however, that in
France a sound and comprehensive knowledge of jurisprudence was a
frequent avenue to honourable civic appointments, and yet overlooking
his own incompetency to make any degree of legal knowledge available for
this purpose, he pursued his studies for some years with indefatigable
assiduity; and during the last year of his stay at D. his endeavours to
insure himself, by accumulated knowledge, an honourable support, were
stimulated by a growing attachment to the lovely daughter of a merchant,
through whose agency he drew occasional supplies of money from his
guardians.

But even the passion of love, which so often rouses the latent powers of
the diffident into life and energy, failed to inspire the timid Florian
with that external ardour and prompt assidu