and my ready assistance or protection to every one who required it, made
me proportionally popular with, and courted by, the humbler multitude of
the subordinate classes. I was constantly surrounded by the most lawless
and mischievous followers whom the school could afford; all eager for my
commands, and all pledged to their execution.

In good truth, I was a worthy Rowland of such a gang; though I excelled
in, I cared little for the ordinary amusements of the school: I was
fonder of engaging in marauding expeditions contrary to our legislative
restrictions, and I valued myself equally upon my boldness in planning
our exploits, and my dexterity in eluding their discovery. But exactly
in proportion as our school terms connected me with those of my own
years, did our vacations unfit me for any intimate companionship but that
which I already began to discover in myself.

Twice in the year, when I went home, it was to that wild and romantic
part of the country where my former childhood had been spent. There,
alone and unchecked, I was thrown utterly upon my own resources. I
wandered by day over the rude scenes which surrounded us; and at evening
I pored, with an unwearied delight, over the ancient legends which made
those scenes sacred to my imagination. I grew by degrees of a more
thoughtful and visionary nature. My temper imbibed the romance of my
studies; and whether, in winter, basking by the large hearth of our old
hall, or stretched, in the indolent voluptuousness of summer, by the
rushing streams which formed the chief characteristic of the country
around us, my hours were equally wasted in those dim and luxurious
dreams, which constituted, perhaps, the essence of that poetry I had not
the genius to embody. It was then, by that alternate restlessness of
action and idleness of reflection, into which my young years were
divided, that the impress of my character was stamped: that fitfulness of