mean, bitter dependence, to hear what he had to
tell?--he told me that all his friends were respectable, and that my
appearance was no longer that of a person whom he could wish to see at
his table, or introduce to any one as his nephew. And I had staid to
hear all this!

"I can hardly tell you how I got home. I travelled, stage after stage,
along the rough dusty roads, with a weak and feverish body, and almost
despairing mind. On meeting with my mother, I could have laid my head on
her bosom and cried like a child. I took to my bed in a high fever, and
trusted that all my troubles were soon to terminate; but, when the die
was cast, it turned up life. I resumed my old miserable employments--for
what could I else?--and, that I might be less unhappy in the prosecution
of them, my old amusements too. I copied during the day in a clerk's
office that I might live, and wrote during the night that I might be
known. And I have in part, perhaps, attained my object. I have pursued
and caught hold of the shadow on which my heart had been so long set;
and if it prove empty, and untangible, and unsatisfactory, like every
other shadow, the blame surely must rest with the pursuer, not with the
thing pursued. I weary you, Mr. Lindsay; but one word more. There are
hours when the mind, weakened by exertion, or by the teazing monotony of
an employment which tasks without exercising it, can no longer exert its
powers, and when, feeling that sociality is a law of our nature, we seek
the society of our fellow-men. With a creature so much the sport of
impulse as I am, it is of these hours of weakness that conscience takes
most note. God help me! I have been told that life is short; but it
stretches on, and on, and on before me; and I know not how it is to be
passed through."

My spirits had so sunk during this singular conversation, that I had no
heart to reply.

"You are silent, Mr. Lindsay," said the poet; "I have made you as
melancholy as myself; but look around you, and say if ever you have seen
a lovelier spot. See how richly the yellow sunshine slants along the
green sides of Arthur's Seat, and how the thin blue smoke, that has come
floating from the town, fills the bottom of yonder grassy dell, as if it
were a little lake. Mark, too, how boldly the cliffs stand out along its
sides, each with its little patch of shadow. And here, beside us, is St.
Anthony's Well, so famous in song, coming gushing out to the sunshine,
and then glidin