en do young men of similar temperament indulge in
the same enticing speculations, and allow themselves to be carried away
by the blissful creations of a fertile fancy; alas! only to awake from
the intoxication of their delightful dream, to realize the pangs of a
bitter disappointment, and a total dispersion of all their brightest
hopes. Not that we deprecate the indulgence of such romantic feelings.
We believe it frequently produces that emulation, by which a persevering
and indomitable spirit is frequently enabled to realize the dreams of
the bright imaginative fertility of youthful ardency; but, as we shall
presently see it was in the case of young Ferguson, so it is too often
in general life, that such visions are doomed to speedy dissipation.

In due time the young man entered upon the duties of his office with a
zeal commensurate to the exalted nature of his expectancy; but the ideal
varnish of his mental conception speedily vanished under the hard
brushing of a monotonous official routine, and his romance succumbed to
the realities of a mundane experience. Though the appointment, to which
our young friend had been inducted, was all that could have been desired
for the scion of a noble house, whose pampered whims and vices were to
be ministered to by the lavish hand of a fond parent, and where the
display of mental abilities was no more necessary than in the propulsion
of the mechanism of one of Her Majesty's establishments erected for the
ambulating exercises of petty delinquents, yet to a young and
high-spirited nature, such as John Ferguson's, the very absence of any
intellectual requirements in the performance of the duties devolving
upon him, caused him soon to feel a distaste for the service; while the
indolence and self-importance practised and assumed by his colleagues
(and so much emulated by the class of candidates for such honours) were
to him extremely irksome and disagreeable, and early caused his
energetic disposition to be dissatisfied with his position.

He had been some little time in his office, and began to experience the
feelings which we have described, when, through the instrumentality of
the kind friend to whom he was indebted for his appointment, he began to
circulate in that society which by his family connexions he was entitled
to mix in. To say he was not fascinated with the polish, gaieties, and
pleasures of a fashionable town life, would be to conceal the truth:
though, at the same time