known after childhood; health to the utmost cannot be enjoyed by those who
overwork the brain, or admit the sure wear and tear of the passions. The
creature I had just seen gave me the notion of youth in the golden age of
the poets,--the youth of the careless Arcadian, before nymph or
shepherdess had vexed his heart with a sigh.




CHAPTER XXIV.

The house I occupied at L---- was a quaint, old-fashioned building, a
corner-house. One side, in which was the front entrance, looked upon a
street which, as there were no shops in it, and it was no direct
thoroughfare to the busy centres of the town, was always quiet, and at
some hours of the day almost deserted. The other side of the house
fronted a lane; opposite to it was the long and high wall of the garden to
a Young Ladies' Boarding-school. My stables adjoined the house, abutting
on a row of smaller buildings, with little gardens before them, chiefly
occupied by mercantile clerks and retired tradesmen. By the lane there
was a short and ready access both to the high turnpike-road, and to some
pleasant walks through green meadows and along the banks of a river.

This house I had inhabited since my arrival at L----, and it had to me so
many attractions, in a situation sufficiently central to be convenient for
patients, and yet free from noise, and favourable to ready outlet into the
country for such foot or horse exercise as my professional avocations
would allow me to carve for myself out of what the Latin poet calls the
"solid day," that I had refused to change it for one better suited to my
increased income; but it was not a house which Mrs. Ashleigh would have