Page:The Head - Keepsake 1834.pdf/10

100 Amalie discovered that the youth's name was Julian; and that he was démocrate en misanthrope, but she undertook to convert him. Even with the very prettiest of preceptors conversion is not the work of a day; so leaving it to its progress, we will take the opportunity of stating who Julian was—alas! a roturier. His father had carried on an extensive trade in precious stones, had travelled much, and profited in more ways than one by his travels; he early realised a competence, and, what is much rarer, early began to enjoy it. He married an English girl, and settling in the valley where he was born, led a life of seclusion, study, and domestic content—a state of existence so often a dream and so rarely a reality. Julian was brought up with every care; his natural talents were cultivated as sedulously as books could cultivate them. But the knowledge of the library is not that of the world; a youth of solitude is bad preparation for a manhood of action; from the earliest age we need to mingle with our kind; the child corrects and instructs the child more than their masters; our equals are the tools wherewith experience works out its lessons; and the play-ground, with its rival interests, its injustices, its necessity for the ready wit and the curbed temper is both miniature and prophesy of the world, which will but bring back the old struggles only with a sterner aspect, and the same successes, but with more than half their enjoyment departed.

The death of Julian's mother was soon followed by that of his father, and at nineteen the youth was left to a world from which he turned with all the desolation that attends on the first acquaintance with sorrow and death. The affection between himself and his parents had been so strong and undivided, that life seemed left without a charm when bereaved of their love. Youth suffers but for a season; the bowed but unbroken spirit resumes its elasticity; the future, unknown and beautiful, wins the present to itself, and the past