, watch over his habits and
conduct, and report to the doctor in his new home, on the Rhine, what
avocation he thought Leonard would be best suited for, and most inclined
to adopt. The charitable Welshman divided with the bookseller the salary
given to Leonard, and left a quarter of his moiety in advance. It is
true that he knew he should be repaid on applying to Mrs. Avenel;
but being a man of independent spirit himself, he so sympathized with
Leonard's present feelings, that he felt as if he should degrade the boy
did he maintain him, even secretly, out of Mrs. Avenel's money,--money
intended not to raise, but keep him down in life. At the worst, it was a
sum the doctor could afford, and he had brought the boy into the world.
Having thus, as he thought, safely provided for his two young charges,
Helen and Leonard, the doctor then gave himself up to his final
preparations for departure. He left a short note for Leonard with Mr.
Prickett, containing some brief advice, some kind cheering; a
postscript to the effect that he had not communicated to Mrs. Avenel the
information Leonard had acquired, and that it were best to leave her in
that ignorance; and six small powders to be dissolved in water, and
a teaspoonful every fourth hour,--"Sovereign against rage and sombre
thoughts," wrote the doctor.

By the evening of the next day Dr. Morgan, accompanied by his pet
patient with the chronic tic, whom he had talked into exile, was on the
steamboat on his way to Ostend.

Leonard resumed his life at Mr. Prickett's; but the change in him did
not escape the bookseller. All his ingenuous simplicity had deserted
him. He was very distant and very taciturn; he seemed to have grown much
older. I shall not attempt to analyze metaphysically this change. By
the help of such words as Leonard may himself occasionally let fall, the
reader will dive into the boy's heart, and see how there the change had
worked, and is working still. The happy, dreamy peasant-genius gazing on
Glory with inebriate, undazzled eyes is no more. It is a man, suddenly
cut off from the old household holy ties,--conscious of great powers,
and confronted on all sides by barriers of iron, alone with hard Reality
and scornful London; and if he catches a glimpse of the lost Helicon, he
sees, where he saw the Muse, a pale melancholy spirit veiling its face
in shame,--the ghost of the mournful mother, whose child has no name,
not even the humblest, among the family of men.