Yours affectionately,
Albert Trevanion.
So, reader, thou art now at the secret of my heart.
Wonder not that I, a bookman’s son, and at certain
periods of my life a bookman myself, though of lowly
grade in that venerable class,—wonder not
that I should thus, in that transition stage between
youth and manhood, have turned impatiently from books.
Most students, at one time or other in their existence,
have felt the imperious demand of that restless principle
in man’s nature which calls upon each son of
Adam to contribute his share to the vast treasury
of human deeds. And though great scholars are
not necessarily, nor usually, men of action, yet the
men of action whom History presents to our survey have
rarely been without a certain degree of scholarly
nurture. For the ideas which books quicken,
books cannot always satisfy. And though the royal
pupil of Aristotle slept with Homer under his pillow,
it was not that he might dream of composing epics,
but of conquering new Ilions in the East. Many
a man, how little soever resembling Alexander, may
still have the conqueror’s aim in an object
that action only can achieve, and the book under his
pillow may be the strongest antidote to his repose.
And how the stern Destinies that shall govern the
man weave their first delicate tissues amidst the
earliest associations of the child! Those idle
tales with which the old credulous nurse had beguiled
my infancy,—tales of wonder, knight-errantry,
and adventure,—had left behind them seeds
long latent, seeds that might never have sprung up
above the soil, but that my boyhood was so early put
under the burning-glass, and in the quick forcing
house, of the London world. There, even amidst
books and study, lively observation and petulant ambition
broke forth from the lush foliage of romance,—that
fruitless leafiness of poetic youth! And there
passion, which is a revolution in all the elements
of individual man, had called anew state of being,
turbulent and eager, out of the old habits and conventional
forms it had buried,—ashes that speak where
the fire has been. Far from me, as from any
mind of some manliness, be the attempt to create interest
by dwelling at length on the struggles against a rash
and misplaced attachment, which it was my duty to
overcome; but all such love, as I have before implied,
is a terrible unsettler,—
“Where once such
fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow.”
To re-enter boyhood, go with meek docility through
its disciplined routine—how hard had I
found that return, amidst the cloistered monotony
of college! My love for my father, and my submission
to his wish, had indeed given some animation to objects
otherwise distasteful; but now that my return to the
University must be attended with positive privation
to those at home, the idea became utterly hateful and
repugnant. Under pretence that I found myself,
