rd it by recalling those
portions of life most cherished by themselves. Before we parted that
night, he told me his little history. He had been educated for the
army; before he entered the profession he had seen the daughter of a
neighbour, loved her, and the old story,--she loved him again, and died
before the love passed the ordeal of marriage. He had no longer a desire
for glory, but he had for excitement. He sold his little property and
travelled, as he had said, for nearly fourteen years, equally over the
polished lands of Europe and the far climates where Truth seems fable
and Fiction finds her own legends realized or excelled.

He returned home poor in pocket and wearied in spirit. He became what I
beheld him. "My lot is fixed now," said he, in conclusion; "but I find
there is all the difference between quiet and content: my heart eats
itself away here; it is the moth fretting the garment laid by, more than
the storm or the fray would have worn it."

I said something, commonplace enough, about solitude, and the blessings
of competence, and the country. The Cure shook his head gently, but
made no answer; perhaps he did wisely in thinking the feelings are
ever beyond the reach of a stranger's reasoning. We parted more
affectionately than acquaintances of so short a date usually do; and
when I returned from Russia, I stopped at the village on purpose to
inquire after him. A few months had done the work: the moth had already
fretted away the human garment; and I walked to his lowly and nameless
grave, and felt that it contained the only quiet in which monotony is
not blended with regret!

CHAPTER II.

THE ENTRANCE INTO PETERSBURG.--A RENCONTRE WITH AN INQUISITIVE AND
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.--NOTHING LIKE TRAVEL.

IT was certainly like entering a new world when I had the frigid
felicity of entering Russia. I expected to have found Petersburg a
wonderful city, and I was disappointed; it was a wonderful beginning
of a city, and that was all I ought to leave expected. But never,
I believe, was there a place which there was so much difficulty
in arriving at: such winds, such climate, such police
arrangements,--arranged, too, by such fellows! six feet high, with
nothing human about them but their uncleanness and ferocity! Such
vexatious delays, difficulties, ordeals, through which it was necessary
to pass, and to pass, too, with an air of the most perfect satisfaction
and content. By the Lord! one would have imagine