Guy Mannering | Page 3

plan of education which the sage had enjoined. A tutor
of the strictest principles was employed to superintend the youth's
education; he was surrounded by domestics of the most established
character, and closely watched and looked after by the anxious father
himself.
The years of infancy, childhood, and boyhood passed as the father
could have wished. A young Nazarene 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 over-cloud 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 resisted with all his power the dark suggestions

which were breathed into his mind, as it seemed by some emanation of
the Evil Principle, exhorting him, like the wicked wife of Job, to curse
God and die.
The time at length arrived when he was to perform what was then
thought a long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of the
early friend who had calculated his nativity. His road lay through
several places of interest, and he enjoyed the amusement of travelling
more than he himself thought would have been possible. Thus he did
not reach the place of his destination till noon on the day preceding his
birthday. It seemed as if he had been carried away with an unwonted
tide of pleasurable sensation, so as to forget in some degree what his
father had communicated concerning the purpose of his journey. He
halted at length before a respectable but solitary old mansion, to which
he was directed as the abode of his father's friend.
The servants who came to take his horse told him he had been expected
for two days. He was led into a study, where the stranger, now a
venerable old man, who had been his father's guest, met him with a
shade of displeasure, as well as gravity, on his brow. 'Young man,' he
said, 'wherefore so slow on a journey of such importance?' 'I thought,'
replied the guest, blushing and looking downward,' that there was no
harm in travelling slowly and satisfying my curiosity, providing I could
reach your residence by this day; for such was my father's charge.' 'You
were to blame,' replied the sage, 'in lingering, considering that the
avenger of blood was pressing on your footsteps. But you are come at
last, and we will hope for the best, though the conflict in which you are
to be engaged will be found more dreadful the longer it is postponed.
But first accept of such refreshments as nature requires to satisfy, but
not to pamper, the appetite.'
The old man led the way into a summer parlour, where a frugal meal
was placed on the table. As they sat down to the board they were joined
by a young lady about eighteen years of age, and so lovely that the
sight of her carried off the feelings of the young stranger from the
peculiarity and mystery of his own lot, and riveted his attention to
everything she did or said. She spoke little and it was on the most

serious subjects. She played on the harpsichord at her father's command,
but it was hymns with which she accompanied the instrument.