brain. The whole sweet system moves to music.

Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit of his son,
which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected, as due to
his plan. The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his clinging to
solitude, his abstraction, and downcast but not melancholy air, were
matters for rejoicing to the prescient gentleman. "For it comes," said
he to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne, after consulting him medically on the
youth's behalf and being assured of his soundness, "it comes of a
thoroughly sane condition. The blood is healthy, the mind virtuous:
neither instigates the other to evil, and both are perfecting toward the
flower of manhood. If he reach that pure--in the untainted fulness and
perfection of his natural powers--I am indeed a happy father! But one
thing he will owe to me: that at one period of his life he knew paradise,
and could read God's handwriting on the earth! Now those abominations
whom you call precocious boys--your little pet monsters, doctor!--and who
can wonder that the world is what it is? when it is full of them--as they
will have no divine time to look back upon in their own lives, how can
they believe in innocence and goodness, or be other than sons of
selfishness and the Devil? But my boy," and the baronet dropped his
voice to a key that was touching to hear, "my boy, if he fall, will fall
from an actual region of purity. He dare not be a sceptic as to that.
Whatever his darkness, he will have the guiding light of a memory behind
him. So much is secure."

To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of
profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received
opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual insight,
is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having first persuaded
themselves, contrive to influence their neighbours, and through them to