wretched yet noble-looking visages I then contemplated in the daily
walks which my mother's own little family group were accustomed to
take there. One person, a gaunt figure, with melancholy and bravery
stamped on his emaciated features, is often present to the
recollection of us all. He was clad in a threadbare blue uniform
great coat, with a black stock, a rusty old hat, pulled rather over
his eyes; his hands without gloves; but his aspect was that of a
perfect gentleman, and his step that of a military man. We saw him
constantly at one hour, in the middle walk of the Mall, and always
alone; never looking to the right nor to the left, but straight on;
with an unmoving countenance, and a pace which told that his thoughts
were those of a homeless and hopeless man--hopeless, at least, of all
that life might bring him. On, on he went to the end of the Mall;
turned again, and on again; and so he continued to do always, as long
as we remained spectators of his solitary walk: once, indeed, we saw
him crossing into St. Martin's Lane. Nobody seemed to know him, for
he spoke to none; and no person ever addressed him, though many, like
ourselves, looked at him, and stopped in the path to gaze after him.
We often longed to be rich, to follow him wherever his wretched abode
might have been, and then silently to send comforts to him from hands
he knew not of. We used to call him, when speaking of him to
ourselves, _Il Penseroso;_ and by that name we yet not unfrequently
talk of him to each other, and never without recurrence to the very
painful, because unavailing, sympathy we then felt for that apparently
friendless man. Such sympathy is, indeed, right; for it is one of the
secondary means by which Providence conducts the stream of his mercies
to those who need the succor of their fellow-creatures; and we cannot
doubt that, though the agency of such Providence was not to be in
our hands, there were those who had both the will and the power
given, and did not, like ourselves, turn and pity that interesting