the living grass,' I gained an Eden-glimpse of the pleasures of virtue.
'N.B. Found the tramp drunk in a ditch. I could not have degraded myself on such a day—ah! how could he?'
'Tuesday, 22nd.—Barometer rapidly falling. Heavy clouds in the south-east. My heart sank into gloomy forebodings. Read Manfred, and doubted whether I should live long. The leaden weight of destiny seemed to crush down my aching forehead, till the thunder-storm burst, and peace was restored to my troubled soul.'
This was very bad; but to do justice to Lancelot, he had grown out of it at the time when my story begins. He was now in the fifth act of his 'Werterean' stage, that sentimental measles which all clever men must catch once in their lives, and which, generally, like the physical measles, if taken early, settles their constitution for good or evil; if taken late, goes far towards killing them. Lancelot had found Byron and Shelley pall on his taste, and commenced devouring Bulwer and worshipping Ernest Maltravers. We had left Bulwer for old ballads and romances, and Mr. Carlyle's reviews; was next alternately chivalry-mad, and Germany-mad; was now reading hard at physical science; and on the whole trying to become a great man, without any very clear notion of what a great man ought to be. Real education he never had had. Bred up at home under his father, a rich merchant, he had
