qualities and accomplishments, and his juvenile celebrity, which has
spoiled so much promise, a vein of grave simplicity that was the
consequence of an earnest temper, and of an intellect that would be
content with nothing short of the profound.

His was a mind that loved to pursue every question to the centre. But it
was not a spirit of scepticism that impelled this habit; on the contrary,
it was the spirit of faith. Coningsby found that he was born in an age of
infidelity in all things, and his heart assured him that a want of faith
was a want of nature. But his vigorous intellect could not take refuge in
that maudlin substitute for belief which consists in a patronage of
fantastic theories. He needed that deep and enduring conviction that the
heart and the intellect, feeling and reason united, can alone supply. He
asked himself why governments were hated, and religions despised? Why
loyalty was dead, and reverence only a galvanised corpse?

These were indeed questions that had as yet presented themselves to his
thought in a crude and imperfect form; but their very occurrence showed
the strong predisposition of his mind. It was because he had not found
guides among his elders, that his thoughts had been turned to the
generation that he himself represented. The sentiment of veneration was so
developed in his nature, that he was exactly the youth that would have
hung with enthusiastic humility on the accents of some sage of old in the
groves of Academus, or the porch of Zeno. But as yet he had found age only
perplexed and desponding; manhood only callous and desperate. Some thought
that systems would last their time; others, that something would turn up.
His deep and pious spirit recoiled with disgust and horror from such lax,
chance-medley maxims, that would, in their consequences, reduce man to the
level of the brutes. Notwithstanding a prejudice which had haunted him
from his childhood, he had, when the occasion offered, applied to Mr.