Guy Mannering.

10 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
could not have been bred up with more rigour. All that
was evil was withheld from his observation;-he only
heard what was pure in precept-he only witnessed what
was worthy in practice.
But when the boy began to be lost in the youth, the
attentive father saw cause for alarm. Shades of sadness,
which gradually assumed a darker character, began to
overcloud the young man's temper. Tears, which seemed
involuntary, broken sleep, moonlight wanderings, and a
melancholy for which he could assign no reason, seemed
to threaten at once his bodily health, and the stability of
his mind. The Astrologer was consulted by letter, and
returned for answer, that this fitful state of mind was but
the commencement of his trial, and that the poor youth
must undergo more and more desperate struggles with
the evil that assailed him. There was no 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 re