being, felt his grand nature as Man. And on the
Man rushed the genius long interdicted and thrust aside,--rushing back,
with the first breath of adversity, to console--no! the Man needed not
consolation,--to kindle, to animate, to rejoice! If there is a being in
the world worthy of our envy, after we have grown wise philosophers
of the fireside, it is not the palled voluptuary, nor the careworn
statesman, nor even the great prince of arts and letters, already
crowned with the laurel, whose leaves are as fit for poison as for
garlands; it is the young child of adventure and hope. Ay, and the
emptier his purse, ten to one but the richer his heart, and the wider
the domains which his fancy enjoys as he goes on with kingly step to the
Future.

Not till towards the evening did our adventurer slacken his pace and
think of rest and refreshment. There, then, lay before him on either
side the road those wide patches of uninclosed land which in England
often denote the entrance to a village. Presently one or two neat
cottages came in sight; then a small farmhouse, with its yard and barns.
And some way farther yet, he saw the sign swinging before an inn of some
pretensions,--the sort of inn often found on a long stage between two
great towns commonly called "The Halfway House." But the inn stood back
from the road, having its own separate sward in front, whereon was a
great beech-tree (from which the sign extended) and a rustic arbour; so
that to gain the inn, the coaches that stopped there took a sweep from
the main thoroughfare. Between our pedestrian and the inn there stood,
naked and alone, on the common land, a church; our ancestors never would
have chosen that site for it; therefore it was a modern church,--modern
Gothic; handsome to an eye not versed in the attributes of
ecclesiastical architecture, very barbarous to an eye that was. Somehow
or other the church looked cold and raw and uninviting. It looked a
church for show,--much too big for the scattered hamlet, and void of
all the venerable associations which give their peculiar and unspeakable
atmosphere of piety to the churches in which succeeding generations have
knelt and worshipped. Leonard paused and surveyed the edifice with
an unlearned but poetical gaze; it dissatisfied him. And he was yet
pondering why, when a young girl passed slowly before him, her
eyes fixed on the ground, opened the little gate that led into the
churchyard, and vanished. He did not see the