extravagant: but money slipped through his hands, leaving little to show
for it; and when his quarterly allowance became due, ample though it
was,--too ample, perhaps,--debts wholly forgotten started up to seize
hold of it. And debts as yet being manageable were not regarded with
sufficient horror. Paid or put aside, as the case might be, they were
merely looked upon as bores. Youth is in danger till it learn to look
upon them as furies. For advice, he took it with pleasure, when clothed
with elegance and art, when it addressed ambition, when it exalted the
loftier virtues. But advice, practical and prosy, went in at one ear and
out at the other. In fact, with many talents, he had yet no adequate
ballast of common-sense; and if ever he get enough to steady his bark
through life's trying voyage, the necessity of so much dull weight must
be forcibly stricken home less to his reason than his imagination or his
heart. But if, somehow or other, he get it not, I will not insure his
vessel.

I know not if Lionel Haughton had genius; he never assumed that he had:
but he had something more like genius than that prototype, RESOLVE, of
which he boasted to the artist. He had YOUTH,--real youth,--youth of
mind, youth of heart, youth of soul. Lithe and supple as he moved before
you, with the eye to which light or dew sprang at once from a nature
vibrating to every lofty, every tender thought, he seemed more than
young,--the incarnation of youth.

Darrell took to him at once. Amidst all the engagements crowded on the
important man, he contrived to see Lionel daily. And what may seem
strange, Guy Darrell felt more at home with Lionel Haughton than with any
of his own contemporaries,--than even with Alban Morley. To the last,
indeed, he opened speech with less reserve of certain portions of the
past, or of certain projects in the future. But still, even there, he