would have fairly entitled him to prelect on these subjects in any
university in Europe. Besides this, he had an exquisite poetical
genius; and, in his very first contest, succeeded in carrying off the
prize of poetry, to the utter discomfiture of many formidable rivals.

But, with all these high acquirements, he was not a happy man. He had
been baptized in the waters of melancholy; and a circumstance which
occurred in the fifth year of his curriculum had a baleful and,
ultimately, a fatal effect upon him, dethroning reason from its lofty
seat, and plunging not him only, but another estimable individual,
in the deepest distress. This circumstance, painful as it is, we
must relate; and, on perusing it, the reader will see that the noble
aspirations, the keen susceptibilities, of the mind do not always lead
to happiness; for, alas! it was such an excess of susceptibility in
his intellect which disturbed so sadly the current of his ideas, and
made him an inmate of St. Luke's.

The weather at the period we speak of was truly melancholy. It was
in the gloomy month of November,--that month in which it is said
the suicidal propensities of the English nation are most strongly
in force. The air was either filled with dull, sluggish, unwholesome
fogs, which hung upon it like a nightmare, or soaked in a constant
drizzle of small, annoying, contemptible rain-drops, which, without
possessing the energy and dignity of a shower, were infinitely more
disagreeable, and found their way to the flesh in spite of all the
protective armoury of great-coats, hessian cloaks, or umbrellas. It
seemed as if a wet blanket were drawn between the sun and the earth.
The atmosphere was always foggy, often perfectly wet, but never
thoroughly dry. It wanted vitality; and every person that breathed it
partook of its own damp, hypochondriac, inanimate character.