or the truth of the tale.

Surely the youth had displayed inimitable and heroic qualities. His
courage was the growth of benevolence and reason, and not the child of
insensibility and the nursling of habit. He had been qualified for the
encounter of gigantic dangers by no laborious education. He stepped
forth upon the stage, unfurnished, by anticipation or experience, with
the means of security against fraud; and yet, by the aid of pure
intentions, had frustrated the wiles of an accomplished and veteran
deceiver.

I blessed the chance which placed the youth under my protection. When I
reflected on that tissue of nice contingencies which led him to my door,
and enabled me to save from death a being of such rare endowments, my
heart overflowed with joy, not unmingled with regrets and trepidation.
How many have been cut off by this disease, in their career of virtue
and their blossom-time of genius! How many deeds of heroism and
self-devotion are ravished from existence, and consigned to hopeless
oblivion!

I had saved the life of this youth. This was not the limit of my duty or
my power. Could I not render that life profitable to himself and to
mankind? The gains of my profession were slender; but these gains were
sufficient for his maintenance as well as my own. By residing with me,
partaking my instructions, and reading my books, he would, in a few
years, be fitted for the practice of physic. A science whose truths are
so conducive to the welfare of mankind, and which comprehends the whole
system of nature, could not but gratify a mind so beneficent and
strenuous as his.

This scheme occurred to me as soon as the conclusion of his tale allowed
me to think. I did not immediately mention it, since the approbation of
my wife, of whose concurrence, however, I entertained no doubt, was
previously to be obtained. Dismissing it, for the present, from my
thoughts, I reverted to the incidents of his tale.

The lady whom Welbeck had betrayed and deserted was not unknown to me. I
was but too well acquainted with her fate. If she had been single in
calamity, her tale would have been listened to with insupportable
sympathy; but the frequency of the spectacle of distress seems to lessen
the compassion with which it is reviewed. Now that those scenes are only
remembered, my anguish is greater than when they were witnessed. Then
every new day was only a repetition of the disasters of the foregoing.
My sensibility, if not extingui