hope of remedy, save that he showed steadiness of mind in the
study of the Scriptures. 'He suffers, continued the letter of the
sage,' from the awakening of those harpies the passions, which
have slept with him, as with others, till the period of life which
he has now attained. Better, far better, that they torment him by
ungrateful cravings than that he should have to repent having
satiated them by criminal indulgence.'

The dispositions of the young man were so excellent that he
combated, by reason and religion, the fits of gloom which at times
overcast his mind, and it was not till he attained the
commencement of his twenty-first year that they assumed a
character which made his father tremble for the consequences. It
seemed as if the gloomiest and most hideous of mental maladies was
taking the form of religious despair. Still the youth was gentle,
courteous, affectionate, and submissive to his father's will, and
resisted with all his power the dark suggestions which were
breathed into his mind, as it seemed by some emanation of the Evil
Principle, exhorting him, like the wicked wife of Job, to curse
God and die.

The time at length arrived when he was to perform what was then
thought a long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of
the early friend who had calculated his nativity. His road lay
through several places of interest, and he enjoyed the amusement
of travelling more than he himself thought would have been
possible. Thus he did not reach the place of his destination till
noon on the day preceding his birthday. It seemed as if he had
been carried away with an unwonted tide of pleasurable sensation,
so as to forget in some degree what his father had communicated