o him: and where, indeed, was that dress that a figure like his would
not give grace to? For now, as I eyed him more in detail, I could not
but observe the even favourable alteration which the time of his absence
had produced in his person.

There were still the requisite lineaments, still the same vivid
vermillion and bloom reigning in his face; but now the roses were
more fully blown; the tan of his travels, and a beard somewhat more
distinguishable, had, at the expense of no more delicacy than what he
could well spare, given it an air of becoming manliness and maturity,
that symmetrized nobly with that air of distinction and empire with
which nature had stamped it, in a rare mixture with the sweetness of
it; still nothing had he lost of that smooth plumpness of flesh, which,
glowing with freshness, blooms florid to the eye, and delicious to the
touch; then his shoulders were grown more square, his shape more formed,
more portly, but still free and airy. In short, his figure showed riper,
greater, and perfecter to the experienced eye, than in his tender youth;
and now he was not much more than two and twenty.

In this interval, however, I picked out of the broken, often pleasingly
interrupted account of himself, that he was, at that instant, actually
on his road to London, in not a very paramount plight or condition,
having been wrecked on the Irish coast for which he had prematurely
embarked, and lost the little all he had brought with him from the South
Seas: so that he had not till after great shifts and hardships, in the
company of his fellow-traveller, the captain, got so far on his journey;
that so it was (having heard of his father's death and circumstances,)
he had now the world to begin again, on a new account: a situation,
which he assured me, in a vein of sincerity, that flowing from his
heart, penetrated mine, gave him to farther pain, than that he had not
his power to make me as happy as he could wish. My fortune, you will
please to observe, I had not entered upon any overture of, reserving, to
feast myself with the surprise of it to him, in calmer instants. And, as
to my dress, it could give him no idea of the truth, not only as it was
mourning, but likewise in a style of plainness and simplicity that I had
ever kept to with studied art. He pressed me indeed tenderly to satisfy
his ardent curiosity, both with regard to my past and present state of
life, since his being torn away from me: but I found mean