ar, is certainly wonderfully like him; and so thought Florence
Howard, when she saw the tall, graceful youth, in the same morocco cap
and blue frock coat Edgar used to wear, wending his way past her
father's mansion to the seminary on the hill. She sought to learn his
name; and some person, not very well informed, said 'twas William
Greyson, another foundling of that strange hermit's.

But we wander from the lonely man, who still pores over the sheet he
holds in his attenuated fingers. It is a letter from Edgar Lindenwood.

"Dear, dear uncle," it runs, "gladly I turn from musty tomes of olden
time lore, to give to you the star-lit midnight hour. Fancy, on airy
pinions, flits away over mountain-top and valley, and rests upon that
long arm of the tall linden, that stretches close to your lowly window,
and gazes through the narrow panes on your dear form, bending over some
treasured volume, or sitting, with bowed head, before a blazing fire,
lost in reveries of thought and contemplation. You express a fear that I
may have deemed you arbitrary and severe in the control sometimes
exercised over my humors and inclinations. Your fear is groundless,
uncle. Though some of your commands may have cost me a struggle ere I
could unmurmuringly obey, I have too high an estimate of your judgment
and discrimination to rebel against an authority I feel is grounded in
reason, and only exercised for my benefit and welfare in future life.

"I remember a tale, my mother oft breathed in my infantine ears, of a
bright star that once skirted the literary horizon, and ere long darkly
disappeared; of a lofty, sensitive nature, that met a staggering blow,
and reeled to earth, no more to soar aloft. And, though I have never
known the details of that early disappointment, I regard, with
overflowing reverence, sympathy, and devotional affection, the suffering,
uncomplaining heart that struggles silently on, with its wreck of
youthful hopes and aspirations.

"Shall I tell you, uncle, my university life promises to be a brief one?
You will think it augurs badly for the erudition of the faculty of this
institution, when I inform you that they have placed me among the senior
class, which will graduate in the coming spring. Then I propose to take a
brief tour of travel, and amuse myself by sketching from the beautiful
scenery of this country. I find the passion for art increases with my
years. Once I wished to be a poet, but now the painter's pencil yie