and by a suspension of our ordinary
laws to proclaim the might and mercy of the Divinity. How but by a
miracle could the character of Rupert Sinclair have belied the natural
reasoning of all ordinary mortals, exhibiting the utter annihilation of
the intimate connexion of cause and effect, and the independence of the
infant soul, when God so wills it, of the machinations of the wicked,
and the vicious trifling of the foolish? The good sense of the youth had
strengthened and increased under the enervating system which would have
destroyed a weaker brain and a less honest heart. I was the tutor of
Sinclair, but I suffered him to sketch out his own plan of study. His
mother had not failed to forward me the usual instructions respecting
the treatment of her darling child; but had she been silent I should not
have insisted upon a strict adherence to the college system with one
who, neither in the university nor in the world, to which he was about
to be summoned, would be tasked to remember or repeat one syllable of
his lessons. Great is the temptation to dwell upon these early days of
our attachment; for, alas! a pang must wait upon the pen when it traces
the last record of a period unclouded by grief. An account of the
earliest springtime that promised so fair a summer and harvest, is, it
is true, not necessary to the main plot of the drama I have undertaken
to write; but one of its chief characters can hardly be thoroughly
understood without some reference to his conduct and pursuits previously
to the commencement of the action. To say that I was prepossessed in
favour of my pupil after my first conversation with him, is to say but
little. I was at once surprised, delighted, and charmed. I had expected
to receive a spoiled child of fortune; a giddy, self-willed, arrogant,
and overbearing boy. I met with one whose demeanour was gentle, modest,
and sedate. A childlike simplicity governed his manners; reflection and
sound judgment his discourse. Long before the close of my young friend's
academical career I had gained his entire confidence--he my heart; and
_at_ the close of it, I had not occasion to change one opinion or one
sentiment entertained for my charge at the commencement of our
friendship; so transparent are the minds of the ingenuous, and of those
whom nature shelters from the baleful influences of life. It must,
however, be stated, that in the all but perfect specimen of humanity
presented to the world in the person