it, and 'has nothing else to do,' has a very good right to ride.

But what is a description, without a sketch of the weather?--In
these Pantheist days especially, when a hero or heroine's moral
state must entirely depend on the barometer, and authors talk as if
Christians were cabbages, and a man's soul as well as his lungs
might be saved by sea-breezes and sunshine; or his character
developed by wearing guano in his shoes, and training himself
against a south wall--we must have a weather description, though, as
I shall presently show, one in flat contradiction of the popular
theory. Luckily for our information, Lancelot was very much given
to watch both the weather and himself, and had indeed, while in his
teens, combined the two in a sort of a soul-almanack on the
principles just mentioned--somewhat in this style:--

'Monday, 21st.--Wind S.W., bright sun, mercury 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