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 During the whole of his novitiate his pen was in diligent exercise. He wrote various essays, some of them of considerable merit, and maintained a long and elaborate correspondence with several of his friends. Not satisfied with these labours, he kept a minute and copious journal, not merely of the incidents and occurrences of the day, but of his thoughts, feelings, and reflections. He did this for the double purpose of improvement in thinking and in writing. Of excellence in style he was always ambitious, and for it he most assiduously laboured.

Of the progress that he made, or was qualified to make, in the science of law, the decisions before alluded to afford abundant and convincing evidence. His qualifications and attainments were unquestionably great for so young a man; and of moral purity and elevation of sentiment he was a rare and signal example. His early associates were selected solely with a view to moral and intellectual improvement; for to sensual enjoyments and vicious pleasures he was an utter stranger. Vice in every shape was loathsome and disgusting to him.

He was now of that age when youth swells into manhood,―when the dispositions, habits, and propensities of early life become fixed and permanent, or, swayed by novel and unforeseen circumstances, assume new directions, or become supplanted by others still more powerful. The period came when the study was to be succeeded by the practice of the law. To this he was decidedly averse. His resolution was fixed, and the law was abandoned. Neither argument nor persuasion could vanquish his resolution. This was not the result of whim or caprice. His passion for letters, the weakness of his physical constitution, and his reluctance to engage in the noise and bustle of professional business, were doubtless causes abundantly adequate to the production of this effect. The last of these originated in that habit of romantic and visionary speculation in which he so much delighted to indulge, and of which he gave a striking instance in the essays which be published under the title of the "Rhapsodist."