midable brow when sitting over
a book that interests him, or while listening to tales of adventure,
peril, or wonder, narrated by his mother, Hunsden, or myself. But
though still, he is not unhappy--though serious, not morose; he has a
susceptibility to pleasurable sensations almost too keen, for it amounts
to enthusiasm. He learned to read in the old-fashioned way out of a
spelling-book at his mother's knee, and as he got on without driving by
that method, she thought it unnecessary to buy him ivory letters, or to
try any of the other inducements to learning now deemed indispensable.
When he could read, he became a glutton of books, and is so still.
His toys have been few, and he has never wanted more. For those he
possesses, he seems to have contracted a partiality amounting to
affection; this feeling, directed towards one or two living animals of
the house, strengthens almost to a passion.

Mr. Hunsden gave him a mastiff cub, which he called Yorke, after the
donor; it grew to a superb dog, whose fierceness, however, was much
modified by the companionship and caresses of its young master. He would
go nowhere, do nothing without Yorke; Yorke lay at his feet while he
learned his lessons, played with him in the garden, walked with him in
the lane and wood, sat near his chair at meals, was fed always by his
own hand, was the first thing he sought in the morning, the last he left
at night. Yorke accompanied Mr. Hunsden one day to X----, and was bitten
in the street by a dog in a rabid state. As soon as Hunsden had brought
him home, and had informed me of the circumstance, I went into the yard
and shot him where he lay licking his wound: he was dead in an instant;
he had not seen me level the gun; I stood behind him. I had scarcely
been ten minutes in the house, when my ear was struck with sounds of
anguish: I repaired to the yard once more, for they proceeded thence.
Victor was kneeling beside his dead mastiff, bent over it, embracing its
bull-like neck, and lost in a passion of the wildest woe: he saw me.

"Oh, papa, I'll never forgive you! I'll never forgive you!" was his
exclamation. "You shot Yorke--I saw it from the window. I never believed
you could be so cruel--I can love you no more!"

I had much ado to explain to him, with a steady voice, the stern
necessity of the deed; he still, with that inconsolable and bitter
accent which I cannot render, but which pierced my heart, repeated--

"He might have been cured--y