temper. Tears, which seemed involuntary, broken sleep, moonlight
wanderings, and a melancholy for which he could assign no reason,
seemed to threaten at once his bodily health, and the stability of
his mind. The Astrologer was consulted by letter, and returned for
answer, that this fitful state of mind was but the commencement of
his trial, and that the poor youth must undergo more and more
desperate struggles with the evil that assailed him. There was no
hope of remedy, save that he showed steadiness of mind in the study
of the Scriptures. "He suffers," continued the letter of the sage,"
from the awakening of those harpies, the passions, which have slept
with him as with others, till the period of life which he has now
attained. Better, far better, that they torment him by ungrateful
cravings, than that he should have to repent having satiated them
by criminal indulgence."

The dispositions of the young man were so excellent, that he
combated, by reason and religion, the fits of gloom which at times
overcast his mind, and it was not till he attained the commencement
of his twenty-first year, that they assumed a character which made
his father tremble for the consequences. It seemed as if the
gloomiest and most hideous of mental maladies was taking the form
of religious despair. Still the youth was gentle, courteous,
affectionate, and submissive to his father's will, and resisted
with all his power the dark suggestions which were breathed into
his mind, as it seemed, by some emanation of the Evil Principle,
exhorting him, like the wicked wife of job, to curse God and die.

The time at length arrived when be was to perform what was then
thought a long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of the
early friend who had calculated his nativity. His road lay through