rded enthusiasm of his soul.

But his mind, rather thoughtful than imaginative, found no idol like
"Divine Philosophy." It delighted to plunge itself into the mazes of
metaphysical investigation; to trace the springs of the intellect; to
connect the arcana of the universe; to descend into the darkest caverns,
or to wind through the minutest mysteries of Nature, and rise, step
by step, to that arduous elevation on which Thought stands dizzy and
confused, looking beneath upon a clouded earth, and above upon an
unfathomable heaven.

Rarely wandering from his chamber, known personally to few and
intimately by none, Algernon yet left behind him at the University
the most remarkable reputation of his day. He had obtained some of the
highest of academical honours, and by that proverbial process of vulgar
minds which ever frames the magnificent from the unknown, the seclusion
in which he lived and the recondite nature of his favourite pursuits
attached to his name a still greater celebrity and interest than all the
orthodox and regular dignities he had acquired. There are few men who
do not console themselves for not being generally loved, if they can
reasonably hope that they are generally esteemed. Mordaunt had now grown
reconciled to himself and to his kind. He had opened to his interest a
world in his own breast, and it consoled him for his mortification in
the world without. But, better than this, his habits as well as studies
had strengthened the principles and confirmed the nobility of his mind.
He was not, it is true, more kind, more benevolent, more upright than
before; but those virtues now emanated from principle, not emotion:
and principle to the mind is what a free constitution is to a people;
without that principle or that free constitution, the one may be for
the moment as good, the other as happy; but we cannot tell how long the
goodness and the happiness will continue.

On leaving the University, his father sent for him to London. He stayed
there a short time, and mingled partially in its festivities; but the
pleasures of English dissipation have for a century been the same,
heartless without gayety, and dull without refinement. Nor could
Mordaunt, the most fastidious, yet warm-hearted of human beings,
reconcile either his tastes or his affections to the cold insipidities
of patrician society. His father's habits and evident distresses
deepened his disgust to his situation; for the habits were incurable and