a book of poems till it was bed-time, being
disturbed a good deal, however, by the noisy mirth which resounded long
after forbidden hours from Bruce's study overhead. Bruce was also to
leave Harton in a month, and they were going up together to Saint
Werner's College, Camford. But the difference was, that Bruce went up
wealthy and popular; Julian, whose retiring disposition and refined
tastes won him far fewer though truer friends, was going up as a sizar,
with no prospect of remaining at the University unless he won himself
the means of doing so by his own success. It was this thought that had
made him sigh.

CHAPTER TWO.

JULIAN HOME.

"O thou goddess,
Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys; they are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing beneath the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as fierce,
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud'st wind
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And makes him bow to the vale."
_Cymbeline, Act 4, scene 2_.

It was but recently, (as will be explained hereafter), that the
circumstances had arisen which had rendered it necessary for Julian Home
to enter Saint Werner's as a sizar and since that necessity had arisen,
he had been far from happy. A peculiar sensitiveness had been from
childhood the distinctive feature of his character. It rendered him
doubly amenable to every emotion of pleasure and pain, and gave birth to
a self-conscious spirit, which made his nature appear weaker, when
a boy, than it really was. While he was at Harton, this
self-consciousness made him keenly, almost tremblingly, alive to the
opinions of others about himself. His self-depreciation arose from real
humility, and there was in his heart so deep a fountain of love towards
all his fellows, and so sympathising an admiration of all their good or
brilliant qualities, that he was far too apt to suffer himself to be
tormented by the indifference or dislike of those who were far his
inferiors.

It was strange that such a boy should have had enemies, but he was sadly
aware that in that light some regarded him. Had it been possible to
conciliate them without any compromise in his line of action, he would
have done so at any cost; but as their enmity arose from that vehement
moral indignation which Julian both felt and expressed against the
iniquities which he despised and disapproved, he knew that all union
with them was out of his power. A