favourite was ineffectual to deprive him of his son’s admiration:  it was bitter, sarcastic, contemptuous—­but as she bestowed her heavy censure alike on his virtues as his errors, on his devoted friendship and his ill-bestowed loves, on his disinterestedness and his prodigality, on his pre-possessing grace of manner, and the facility with which he yielded to temptation, her double shot proved too heavy, and fell short of the mark.  Nor did her angry dislike prevent Adrian from imaging my father, as he had said, the type of all that was gallant, amiable, and fascinating in man.  It was not strange therefore, that when he heard of the existence of the offspring of this celebrated person, he should have formed the plan of bestowing on them all the advantages his rank made him rich to afford.  When he found me a vagabond shepherd of the hills, a poacher, an unlettered savage, still his kindness did not fail.  In addition to the opinion he entertained that his father was to a degree culpable of neglect towards us, and that he was bound to every possible reparation, he was pleased to say that under all my ruggedness there glimmered forth an elevation of spirit, which could be distinguished from mere animal courage, and that I inherited a similarity of countenance to my father, which gave proof that all his virtues and talents had not died with him.  Whatever those might be which descended to me, my noble young friend resolved should not be lost for want of culture.

Acting upon this plan in our subsequent intercourse, he led me to wish to participate in that cultivation which graced his own intellect.  My active mind, when once it seized upon this new idea, fastened on it with extreme avidity.  At first it was the great object of my ambition to rival the merits of my father, and render myself worthy of the friendship of Adrian.  But curiosity soon awoke, and an earnest love of knowledge, which caused me to pass days and nights in reading and study.  I was already well acquainted with what I may term the panorama of nature, the change of seasons, and the various appearances of heaven and earth.  But I was at once startled and enchanted by my sudden extension of vision, when the curtain, which had been drawn before the intellectual world, was withdrawn, and I saw the universe, not only as it presented itself to my outward senses, but as it had appeared to the wisest among men.  Poetry and its creations, philosophy and its researches and classifications, alike awoke the sleeping ideas in my mind, and gave me new ones.

I felt as the sailor, who from the topmast first discovered the shore of America; and like him I hastened to tell my companions of my discoveries in unknown regions.  But I was unable to excite in any breast the same craving appetite for knowledge that existed in mine.  Even Perdita was unable to understand me.  I had lived in what is generally called the world of reality, and it was awakening to a new country to find that