his observation—he only heard what was
pure in precept—he only witnessed what was
worthy in practice. But when the boy began to
be lost in youth, the attentive father saw cause for
alarm. Shades of sadness, which gradually assumed
a darker character, began to overcloud the young man’s
temper. Tears, which seemed involuntary, broken
sleep, moonlight wanderings, and a melancholy for
which he could assign no reason, seemed to threaten
at once his bodily health and the stability of his
mind. The astrologer was consulted by letter,
and returned for answer, that this fitful state of
mind was but the commencement of his trial, and that
the poor youth must undergo more and more desperate
struggles with the evil that assailed him. There
was no hope of remedy, save that he showed steadiness
of mind in the study of the Scriptures. “He
suffers,” continued the letter of the sage,
“from the awakening of these harpies, the passions,
which have slept with him as with others, till the
period of life which he has now attained. Better,
far better, that they torment him by ungrateful cravings,
than that he should have to repent having satiated
them by criminal indulgence.” The dispositions
of the young man were so excellent, that he combated,
by reason and religion, the fits of gloom which at
times overcast his mind; and it was not till he attained
the commencement of his twenty-first year, that they
assumed a character which made his father tremble
for the consequences. It seemed as if the gloomiest
and most hideous of mental maladies were taking the
form of religious despair. Still the youth was
gentle, courteous, affectionate, and submissive to
his father’s will, and resisted with all his
power the dark suggestions which were breathed into
his mind, as it seemed, by some emanation of the Evil
Principle, exhorting him, like the wicked wife of
Job, to curse God and die.
The time at length arrived when he was to perform
what was then thought a long and somewhat perilous
journey, to the mansion of the early friend who had
calculated his nativity. His road lay through
several places of interest, and he enjoyed the amusement
of travelling more than he himself thought would have
been possible. Thus he did not reach the place
of his destination till noon, on the day preceding
his birthday. It seemed as if he had been carried
away with an unwonted tide of pleasurable sensation,
so as to forget, in some degree, what his father had
communicated concerning the purpose of his journey.
He halted at length before a respectable but solitary
old mansion, to which he was directed as the abode
of his father’s friend. The servants who
came to take his horse, told him he had been expected
for two days. He was led into a study, where
the stranger, now a venerable old man, who had been
his father’s guest, met him with a shade of displeasure
as well as gravity on his brow. “Young
man,” said he, “wherefore so slow on a
journey of such importance?” “I thought,”