CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE FRESH AND GREATER OBJECTS WHICH MY TUTOR SET BEFORE ME, AND MY EAGERNESS TO PURSUE THEM.

As the world were now but to begin.-SHAKSPEARE.-Hamlet.

THUS, in fact, passed a very long period of my early academical life, varied with little scenes, which have become favourites in my recollections. My progress to recovery was not only owing to my dedication of myself to letters, but the recovery advancing made my progress in letters still greater. In this, Fothergill never failed me, and opened, as I grew ripe for it, much wider sources of information than was confined to what was called learning. For a man who was to live in the world, which he always bade me recollect I was to do, there were two sciences, he said, worth all the rest-Modern History and Modern Manners-by which last he meant the morals of men.

It was surprising how much a mere Cumberland boor (as) he with some affectation called himself) knew of the first of these. Of the last, I have given many specimens. In the first, however, he had profited by his intimacy with Lord Castleton, who, highly gifted, and living himself on a sea of politics, was necessarily devoted to, and well understood, those subjects; and what he knew he had not failed to communicate to Fothergill, and Fothergill to me.

"Who knows," said my tutor, "but if you accomplish yourself in this interesting knowledge, you may one day be acquainted with this excellent and able nobleman, and bring it more to profit in the world than I did."

The thought struck instantaneously and deeply into my mind, and, without having any definite ideas upon it, it sharpened my industry, so that I acquired a very decent modicum of modern memoirs, politics, and diplomacy.

But even superior to this, in Fothergill's mind, was the inexhaustible, the never-ending, still beginning subject of hu

man nature.

"This, however," he said, " you can never acquire with closed doors."

He was here indeed, or would have been a favourite disciple of Johnson, and would have walked Fleet-street and the Strand with as much success as the sage. In pursuance of this, he laid before me a plan for the long vacations (especially as my cure of Bertha advanced) which was charming to my fancy.

"Go," said he, "pay your duty to your father and mother; shew and gladden them with your improvements; but do not stay too long. Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits.' See the world in all the shapes of it you can master. You cannot do it en grand seigneur; you cannot afford a post chaise; and if you could, it would be the readiest way to defeat your object. Perhaps even a horse might be objectionable. A philosopher on foot (or we will ennoble him with the name of a peripatetic) finds out most of life. this purpose, indeed, a stage-coach is not despicable, but a private carriage will tell you nothing. A pedestrian expedition, however, is the thing. This I should have found out of myself (for I have often practiced it) even without the glowing panegyric upon it by Rousseau, which, with a view to my proposal, I have looked out for you."

For

So saying, he put the volume into my hands, and I read, with much interest, the following passages:

"Jamais je n'ai tant pense, tant existe, tant vecu, tant ete moi, si j'ose ansi dire, que dans ces voyages que j'ai faits seul et a pied. La marche a quelque chose qui anime mes idees; je ne puis presque penser quand je reste en place; il faut que mon corps soit en branle pour y mettremon esprit. La vue de la campagne, la succession des aspects agreables, le grand air, le grand appetit, la bonne sante que je gagne en marchant ; la liberte do cabaret, l'eloignement de tout ce qui me fait sentir mon dependance, de tout ce qui me rappelle a ma situation, tout cela degage mon ame, me donne one plus grande audace de penser, me jette en quelque sorte dans l'immensite des etres, pour les combiner, les choisir, me les approprier sans gene et sans crainte ; je dispose en maitre de la nature entiere; mon cœur errant d'objet en objet, s'unit, s'identifie a ceux qui le flattent, s'entoure d'immages charmantes, s'enivre de sentiments delicieux. Si pour les fixer je m'amuse a les decrire en moi

meme quelle vigueur de pinceau, quelle fraicheur de coloris, quelle energie d'expression je leur donne !"

I was so warmed with this description, that it was like a match to a train, and I was impatient to begin the tour.

"I thought it would excite you, as it did me at your age,' said Fothergill. "But recollect all you have to expect and encounter. At the same time, though there may be apparent difficulties (chiefly from false pride), common sense, and that spice of romance which you have in your composition, will bring you through."

CHAPTER IX.

I LEARN HOW TO TAKE A WALK.-PICTURE OF A CONTEMPLATIVE MAN AND PRACTICAL OBSERVER.

But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

Oh! yes; into a thousand similes.

SHAKSPEARE.-
-As You Like It.

UNDER such a master, no wonder if my own similar disposition to observe, and to reason upon what he called the moral phenomena of our species, as well as upon things of a higher character, was cultivated and improved. In fact, I never knew a man so formed to conduct a youthful mind in all that was most precious to its welfare, whether worldly or religious. He drew lessons from every thing he saw or heard, of the most common, as well as of the rarest occurrence. In short, the world was his study, and all things that filled it, whether animate or inanimate, material or spiritual, were made subservient to this great end; and this disposition he did his utmost to encourage and cherish in me.

Such a preceptor was of inestimable value to me, and his mode of conveying instruction by familiar colloquy was more lastingly impressive, as well as more pleasant, from its very

familiarity, than a formal lecture ex cathedra. The lecture might be forgotten; the friendly conversation never.

Upon this principle, and inculcating a habit of keen observation as the best road to knowledge, he would ask frequently, at the close of the day, what I had been doing? what I had seen, and what remarked, particularly as to men's motives of action-whether by examining my own, or those of others?

When I have been surprised at this, and at being told I could know other men's motives by my own, he has cut me short by asking if I had never heard the searching phrase, "You judge of others by yourself." For he held, that a man well acquainted with his own heart might, from its workings alone (nay, its very weaknesses), get a fair acquaintance with that of another.

"Your own heart," he would say, "is so far like that of others, as to have passions and springs common to the rest of your kind. Whatever, therefore, is found there, may be found elswhere; and though others may have what you have not, yet at least what you have must belong to human nature at large, though perhaps not to every individual who composes it."

Observing that I had grown more and more fond of walking without companions, except my own thoughts, he said, “If this proceed from your still cherishing what you ought to drive from your memory, you are perverse as well as imprudent."

When I assured him it arose chiefly from my fondness for walking unrestrained by company, he once asked me, “And do you know how to take a walk?"

I thought this an odd question, and told him so; when he replied, that he agreed with a foreign philosophical writer, who said, few men knew how to do this. To prove it, he asked me what I examined in my walks?

"Do you inspect men and things?" asked he; "animate and inanimate? And does the inspection lead you to principles? to causes and effects? and, above all, to trace them to the great First Cause of all? In short, does the earth take you to heaven? Without this, you do not know how to take a walk."

Seeing me rather ponder upon this, and expressing still more wonder, he one day said-" If you do not know how to

gather knowledge from the smallest object or occurrence in the ever varying scene that opens upon you when abroad, you might as well never stir from home, particularly if you have company, who may instruct if they do not amuse you. But a contemplative man will gather instruction and pleasure (the pleasure of adding to his stores) from everything he sees or hears. If his walk be in the country, not a tree, or leaf, or tuft of grass (coursed by the fairies), not a sound of a bird-particularly of the stock-dove, or thrush, most of all of the nightingale-but whispers pleasure to his heart. The bleat of the lamb; the lowing of herds; the murmurs of waterfalls; the rising or setting sun; the soft and soothing twilight ;-all these enter his soul, fill him with rapture almost unaccountable to himself, till he raises his thoughts to Him who created all-diffuses all-and gives us power to value all, as a far more real source of happiness than what the children of the world toil after in vain. For is it not in vain, when, even if obtained, the things sought are, in many instances, nothing but gewgaws, often deemed worthless by those who have pursued them, and thrown away, as gewgaws of spoilt children generally are? Depend upon it, whatever the pursuit or occupation, however gorgeous the object, or flattering the ambition, nothing is really valuable where the mind enters not."

"But if I merely walk the streets?" said I.

"There is more mind there," answered he, "than anywhere else. They are full of intellectual food, You see there all the varieties of life, in all their characters, their good or bad fortune-business, amusements, actions; the noble, the generous,the selfish,the trifling, the vicious-all are here depicted, in interesting and sparkling colors, in the countenance, gait, and movement of every man you meet. The ardor of ambition about to be crowned; the gloom and mortification of ambition disappointed; the speculations of avarice; the torture of suspicion; the stratagems of hypocrisy; the excitement of hope; the uncertainties, the pleasures, the miseries of love! These, and all the other ten thousand diversities of our wayward nature, are presented, as in a glass, to him who knows how to take a walk. Was not my author right, then, in saying that few had that knowledge ?"

I willingly deferred to all this, which only excited me more