cury at 30.5 inches. Felt
my heart expanded towards the universe. Organs of veneration and
benevolence pleasingly excited; and gave a shilling to a tramp. An
inexpressible joy bounded through every vein, and the soft air
breathed purity and self-sacrifice through my soul. As I watched
the beetles, those children of the sun, who, as divine Shelley says,
"laden with light and odour, pass over the gleam of the living
grass," I gained an Eden-glimpse of the pleasures of virtue.

'N.B. Found the tramp drunk in a ditch. I could not have degraded
myself on such a day--ah! how could he?

'Tuesday, 22d.--Barometer rapidly falling. Heavy clouds in the
south-east. My heart sank into gloomy forebodings. Read Manfred,
and doubted whether I should live long. The laden weight of destiny
seemed to crush down my aching forehead, till the thunderstorm
burst, and peace was restored to my troubled soul.'

This was very bad; but to do justice to Lancelot, he had grown out
of it at the time when my story begins. He was now in the fifth act
of his 'Werterean' stage; that sentimental measles, which all clever
men must catch once in their lives, and which, generally, like the
physical measles, if taken early, settles their constitution for
good or evil; if taken late, goes far towards killing them.
Lancelot had found Byron and Shelley pall on his taste and commenced
devouring Bulwer and worshipping Ernest Maltravers. He had left
Bulwer for old ballads and romances, and Mr. Carlyle's reviews; was
next alternately chivalry-mad; and Germany-mad; was now reading hard
at physical science; and on the whole, trying to become a great man,
without any very clear notion of what a great man ought to be. Real
education he never had had. Bred up at home under his father, a
rich merchant, he had gone to college with a large stock of general
information, and a particular mania for dried plants, fossils,
butterflies, and sketching, and some such creed as this:--

That he was very clever.

That he ought to make his fortune.

That a great many things were very pleasant--beautiful things among
the rest.

That it was a fine thing to be 'superior,' gentleman-like, generous,
and courageous.

That a man ought to be religious.

And left college with a good smattering of classics and mathematics,
picked up in the intervals of boat-racing and hunting, and much the
same creed as he brought with him, except in rega