visionary company about him to the external scene.

The rite with which the Roman Church "makes a clerk," aims certainly
at no low measure of difference from the coarser world around him, in
its supposed scholar: and in this case the [11] aspirant (the precise
claims of the situation being well considered) had no misgiving.
Discreetly, and with full attention, he answers Adsum! when his name
is called, and advances manfully; though he kneels meekly enough, and
remains, with his head bowed forward, at the knees of the seated
bishop who recites the appointed prayers, between the anthems and
responses of his Schola, or attendant singers--Might he be saved from
mental blindness! Might he put on the new man, even as his outward
guise was changed! Might he keep the religious habit for ever! who
had thus hastened to lay down the hair of his head for the divine
love. "The Lord is my inheritance" whispers Gaston distinctly, as
the locks fall, cut from the thickly-grown, black head, in five
places, "after the fashion of Christ's crown," the shears in the
episcopal hands sounding aloud, amid the silence of the curious
spectators. From the same hands, in due order, the fair surplice
ripples down over him. "This is the generation of them that seek
Him," the choir sings: "The Lord Himself is the portion of my
inheritance and my cup." It was the Church's eloquent way of bidding
unrestricted expansion to the youthful heart in its timely purpose to
seek the best, to abide among the things of the spirit.

The prospect from their cheerful, unenclosed road, like a white scarf
flung across the land, as [12] the party returned home in the late
August afternoon, was clear and dry and distant. The great barns at
the wayside had their doors thrown back, displaying the dark, cool
space within. The farmsteads seemed almost tenantless, the villagers