ywhere in the real a something that is noble or fair, and making the
fair yet fairer, and the noble nobler still.

In Margrave's character there seemed no special vices, no special
virtues; but a wonderful vivacity, joyousness, animal good-humour. He
was singularly temperate, having a dislike to wine, perhaps from that
purity of taste which belongs to health absolutely perfect. No healthful
child likes alcohol; no animal, except man, prefers wine to water.

But his main moral defect seemed to me in a want of sympathy, even where
he professed attachment. He who could feel so acutely for himself,
be unmanned by the bite of a squirrel, and sob at the thought that he
should one day die, was as callous to the sufferings of another as a
deer who deserts and butts from him a wounded comrade.

I give an instance of this hardness of heart where I should have least
expected to find it in him.

He had met and joined me as I was walking to visit a patient on the
outskirts of the town, when we fell in with a group of children, just
let loose for an hour or two from their day-school. Some of these
children joyously recognized him as having played with them at their
homes; they ran up to him, and he seemed as glad as themselves at the
meeting.

He suffered them to drag him along with them, and became as merry and
sportive as the youngest of the troop.

"Well," said I, laughing, "if you are going to play at leap-frog, pray
don't let it be on the high road, or you will be run over by carts
and draymen; see that meadow just in front to the left,--off with you
there!"

"With all my heart," cried Margrave, "while you pay your visit. Come
along, boys."

A little urchin, not above six years old, but who was lame, began to
cry; he could not run,--he should be left behind.

Margrave stooped. "Climb on my shoulder, little one, and I'll be your
horse."

The child dried its tears, and delightedly obeyed. "Certainly," said I
to myself, "Margrave, after all, must have a nature as gentle as it is
simple. What other young man, so courted by all the allurements that
steal innocence from pleasure, would stop in the thoroughfares to play
with children?"

The thought had scarcely passed through my mind when I heard a scream of
agony. Margrave had leaped the railing that divided the meadow from the
road, and, in so doing, the poor child, perched on his shoulder, had,
perhaps from surprise or fright, loosened its hold and fallen heavily;
its