eason, and toil and strive 'midst groanings and despondency till
thou hast attained excellence even as he has done--the little dark man
with the brown coat and the top-boots, whose name will one day be
considered the chief ornament of the old town, and whose works will at no
distant period rank amongst the proudest pictures of England--and England
against the world!--thy master, my brother, thy, at present, all too
little considered master--Crome.

CHAPTER XXII

Desire for novelty--Lives of the lawless--Countenances--Old yeoman and
dame--We live near the sea--Uncouth-looking volume--The other
condition--Draoitheac--A dilemma--The Antinomian--Lodowick
Muggleton--Almost blind--Anders Vedel.

But to proceed with my own story: I now ceased all at once to take much
pleasure in the pursuits which formerly interested me, I yawned over Ab
Gwilym, even as I now in my mind's eye perceive the reader yawning over
the present pages. What was the cause of this? Constitutional lassitude,
or a desire for novelty? Both it is probable had some influence in the
matter, but I rather think that the latter feeling was predominant. The
parting words of my brother had sunk into my mind. He had talked of
travelling in strange regions and seeing strange and wonderful objects,
and my imagination fell to work, and drew pictures of adventures wild and
fantastic, and I thought what a fine thing it must be to travel, and I
wished that my father would give me his blessing, and the same sum that
he had given my brother, and bid me go forth into the world; always
forgetting that I had neither talents nor energies at this period which
would enable me to make any successful figure on its stage.

And then I again sought up the book which had so captivated me in my
infancy, and I read it through; and I sought up others of a similar
character, and in seeking for them I met books also of adventure, but by
no means of a harmless description, lives of wicked and lawless men,
Murray and Latroon--books of singular power, but of coarse and prurient
imagination--books at one time highly in vogue; now deservedly forgotten,
and most difficult to be found.

And when I had gone through these books, what was my state of mind? I
had derived entertainment from their perusal, but they left me more
listless and unsettled than before, and really knew not what to do to
pass my time. My philological studies had become distasteful, and I had
never taken any p