Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible.  Without concealing the evil in the world he is for ever speculating how good may be made superior.  He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all things reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion.  What Maddalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known.  Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities.  How far this is possible the pious reader will determine.  Julian is rather serious.

Of the Maniac I can give no information.  He seems, by his own account, to have been disappointed in love.  He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his right senses.  His story, told at length, might be like many other stories of the same kind:  the unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a sufficient comment for the text of every heart.

I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice:  a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, 5
Such as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes 10
Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
Where ’twas our wont to ride while day went down. 
This ride was my delight.  I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste 15
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be: 
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; and yet more
Than all, with a remembered friend I love 20
To ride as then I rode;—­for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air
Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth 25
Harmonising with solitude, and sent
Into our hearts aereal merriment. 
So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
But flew from brain to brain,—­such glee was ours, 30
Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
None slow enough for sadness:  till we came
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame. 
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
The sun was sinking, and the wind also.