-which is not always the case--is a thing of fits and starts. I
even doubt whether any one who will take the trouble to recollect, will
not be able to put his finger on the precise periods at which new views
of every thing suddenly opened before him, and he emerged at once, if
not into new powers, at least into a new use of them. The frame may grow
like a tree; the faculties may grow as imperceptibly as the frame; but
the mind acquires that knowledge of life which forms its exercise, its
use, and perhaps its essence, by bounds and flights. This moonlight walk
with my old and honoured Mentor, was the beginning of my mental
adolescence. My manhood was still to come, and with a more severe
instructor.

As we were passing slowly through the plantations which encircled the
Castle with all the noble and profuse shelter and ornament which our
ancestors loved, a distant sound of music came on the wind. I then
remembered, for the first time, that my brother had, on that evening,
given a ball to the county, and a sudden sense of the difference of our
lots in life, came painfully over me;--the course of secure wealth and
English enjoyment, contrasted with the dependence and wandering which
must form the existence of myself, and so many thousands of younger
brothers.

I was awakened from my reverie by the voice of my companion. His face
was upturned to the cloudless sky, and he was murmuring the fine passage
in the Merchant of Venice.

"Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:
Such harmony is in immortal souls."

"Do you know, Charles," said he, "what changed the whole current of my
life? what, in fact, brought me back to England?" and there was a slight
pause. "What made me a Christian? It was such a night as this. As you
now know the chief part of my story, I need have no further concealment
on the subject. I had recovered from my wounds, and was preparing to set
out for Vienna, when one night a tempest blew down our tents, and left
us to trust to the open air for the hours till morning. Tempests in the
south are violent, but they are generally brief, and this gale cleared
the sky of every cloud. As I lay on the ground, and gazed on the unusual
splendour of the stars, the thought occurred to me, Why should doubts of
a future state ever c