and was seldom renewed. Patronage was not less distasteful to him than
sociality. Some occasional visits and condescensions of the great, he had
received with a stern haughtiness, rather than his wonted and subdued
urbanity. The precise amount of his fortune was not known; his wants were
so few, that what would have been poverty to others might easily have
been competence to him; and the only evidence he manifested of the
command of money, was in his extended and various library.

He had now been about two years settled in his present retreat. Unsocial
as he was, every one in the neighbourhood loved him; even the reserve of
a man so eminent, arising as it was supposed to do from a painful
modesty, had in it something winning; and he had been known to evince on
great occasions, a charity and a courage in the service of others which
removed from the seclusion of his habits the semblance of misanthropy and
of avarice. The peasant drew aside with a kindness mingled with his
respect, as in his homeward walk he encountered the pale and thoughtful
Student, with the folded arms and downeast eyes, which characterised the
abstraction of his mood; and the village maiden, as she curtsied by him,
stole a glance at his handsome but melancholy countenance; and told her
sweetheart she was certain the poor scholar had been crossed in love.

And thus passed the Student's life; perhaps its monotony and dullness
required less compassion than they received; no man can judge of the
happiness of another. As the Moon plays upon the waves, and seems to our
eyes to favour with a peculiar beam one long track amidst the waters,
leaving the rest in comparative obscurity; yet all the while, she is no
niggard in her lustre--for though the rays that meet not our eyes seem to
us as though they were not, yet she with an equal and unfavouring
loveliness, mirrors herself on every wave: even so, perhaps, Happiness
falls with the same brightness and power over the whole expanse of Life,