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48 pleasure; and his remorse was more than mitigated by the applause bestowed on his address and presence of mind,—till the horns of the elk came to be viewed with very self-satisfactory feelings. Active pleasures, however, had their day; and Edward soon began to prefer wandering amid the mighty forests, till he half believed in the spirits of which they were the home; or he would lie for hours embedded in some little nook of wild flowers, amid the rocks that looked down on the river—a wild soaring bird the sole interruption to his solitude. But one cannot practise poetry for ever; and he soon found he was declining rapidly from the golden age of innocent pleasure to the silver one of insipidity. So one fine morning saw him bribing his driver, and urging the pretty little brown horses of the country to their utmost speed, on his way to England. The sea-port was gained—the wind as favourable as if that had been bribed too—and in a fortnight he was at Hull, quite as pleased to return to his native land as he had been to leave it.

This journey to Norway may be considered the specimen brick of Edward Lorraine's life and character; for the season before, he had been