"He does not complain of ill health. And pray, was he then of the same
austere and blameless habits of life that he now professes?"

"Nothing could be so faultless as his character appeared; the passions of
youth--(ah! I was a wild fellow at his age,) never seemed to venture near
one.

'Quem casto erudit docta Minerva sinu.'

Well, I am surprised he has not married. We scholars, Sir, fall in love
with abstractions, and fancy the first woman we see is--Sir, let us drink
the ladies."

The next day Walter, having resolved to set out for Knaresborough,
directed his course towards that town; he thought it yet possible that he
might, by strict personal inquiry, continue the clue that Elmore's
account had, to present appearance, broken. The pursuit in which he was
engaged, combined, perhaps, with the early disappointment to his
affections, had given a grave and solemn tone to a mind naturally ardent
and elastic. His character acquired an earnestness and a dignity from
late events; and all that once had been hope within him, deepened into
thought. As now, on a gloomy and clouded day he pursued his course along
a bleak and melancholy road, his mind was filled with that dark
presentiment--that shadow from the coming event, which superstition
believes the herald of the more tragic discoveries, or the more fearful
incidents of life; he felt steeled, and prepared for some dread
denouement,--to a journey to which the hand of Providence seemed to
conduct his steps; and he looked on the shroud that Time casts over all
beyond the present moment with the same intense and painful resolve with
which, in the tragic representations of life, we await the drawing up of