there was a deeper meaning in all I saw, besides that which my eyes conveyed to me.  The visionary Perdita beheld in all this only a new gloss upon an old reading, and her own was sufficiently inexhaustible to content her.  She listened to me as she had done to the narration of my adventures, and sometimes took an interest in this species of information; but she did not, as I did, look on it as an integral part of her being, which having obtained, I could no more put off than the universal sense of touch.

We both agreed in loving Adrian:  although she not having yet escaped from childhood could not appreciate as I did the extent of his merits, or feel the same sympathy in his pursuits and opinions.  I was for ever with him.  There was a sensibility and sweetness in his disposition, that gave a tender and unearthly tone to our converse.  Then he was gay as a lark carolling from its skiey tower, soaring in thought as an eagle, innocent as the mild-eyed dove.  He could dispel the seriousness of Perdita, and take the sting from the torturing activity of my nature.  I looked back to my restless desires and painful struggles with my fellow beings as to a troubled dream, and felt myself as much changed as if I had transmigrated into another form, whose fresh sensorium and mechanism of nerves had altered the reflection of the apparent universe in the mirror of mind.  But it was not so; I was the same in strength, in earnest craving for sympathy, in my yearning for active exertion.  My manly virtues did not desert me, for the witch Urania spared the locks of Sampson, while he reposed at her feet; but all was softened and humanized.  Nor did Adrian instruct me only in the cold truths of history and philosophy.  At the same time that he taught me by their means to subdue my own reckless and uncultured spirit, he opened to my view the living page of his own heart, and gave me to feel and understand its wondrous character.

The ex-queen of England had, even during infancy, endeavoured to implant daring and ambitious designs in the mind of her son.  She saw that he was endowed with genius and surpassing talent; these she cultivated for the sake of afterwards using them for the furtherance of her own views.  She encouraged his craving for knowledge and his impetuous courage; she even tolerated his tameless love of freedom, under the hope that this would, as is too often the case, lead to a passion for command.  She endeavoured to bring him up in a sense of resentment towards, and a desire to revenge himself upon, those who had been instrumental in bringing about his father’s abdication.  In this she did not succeed.  The accounts furnished him, however distorted, of a great and wise nation asserting its right to govern itself, excited his admiration:  in early days he became a republican from principle.  Still his mother did not despair.  To the love of rule and haughty pride of birth she added determined ambition, patience, and self-control.  She devoted herself to the study of her son’s disposition.  By the application of praise, censure, and exhortation, she tried to seek and strike the fitting chords; and though the melody that followed her touch seemed discord to her, she built her hopes on his talents, and felt sure that she would at last win him.  The kind of banishment he now experienced arose from other causes.