only
heard what was pure in precept, he only witnessed what was worthy in
practice.

But when the boy began to be lost in the youth, the attentive father saw
cause for alarm. Shades of sadness, which gradually assumed a darker
character, began to over-cloud the young man's temper. Tears, which
seemed involuntary, broken sleep, moonlight wanderings, and a melancholy
for which he could assign no reason, seemed to threaten at once his
bodily health and the stability of his mind. The Astrologer was consulted
by letter, and returned for answer that this fitful state of mind was but
the commencement of his trial, and that the poor youth must undergo more
and more desperate struggles with the evil that assailed him. There was
no hope of remedy, save that he showed steadiness of mind in the study of
the Scriptures. 'He suffers, continued the letter of the sage,' from the
awakening of those harpies the passions, which have slept with him, as
with others, till the period of life which he has now attained. Better,
far better, that they torment him by ungrateful cravings than that he
should have to repent having satiated them by criminal indulgence.'

The dispositions of the young man were so excellent that he combated, by
reason and religion, the fits of gloom which at times overcast his mind,
and it was not till he attained the commencement of his twenty-first year
that they assumed a character which made his father tremble for the
consequences. It seemed as if the gloomiest and most hideous of mental
maladies was taking the form of religious despair. Still the youth was
gentle, courteous, affectionate, and submissive to his father's will, and
resisted with all his power the dark suggestions which were breathed into
his mind, as it seemed by some emanation of the Evil Principle, exhorting
him, like the wicked wife of Job, to curse God and die.

The time at length arrived when he was to perform what was then thought a
long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of the early friend
who had calculated his nativity. His road lay through several places of
interest, and he enjoyed the amusement of travelling more than he himself
thought would have been possible. Thus he did not reach the place of his
destination till noon on the day preceding his birthday. It seemed as if
he had been carried away with an unwonted tide of pleasurable sensation,
so as to forget in some degree what his father had communicated
concerning the purpo