TRIALS OF THE HEART. PREDICTION. PART THE FIRST. But he had felt the power Of Nature, and already was prepared, Whom Nature, by whatever means has taught WORDSWORTH. CHARLES EDWARDS was a young man of an ancient Welsh family; his birth was better than his fortune. He was placed by the care of his mother at the University of Oxford, to prepare him for holy orders. The income of this gentlewoman was very narrow; indeed, her sole maintenance arose from a pension which she received as the widow of a person who had held a confidential situation under the government. So small were her means that they would scarcely allow her to do what she did for her only and beloved son, whose welfare was the sole interest that bound her to life, now her husband, to whom she had been devoted in affection, was no more. With extreme economy, and the assistance of a scholarship, which he gained soon after his entrance at college, Charles managed to remain at the university during the necessary terms, and he gave himself up, heart and soul, to study. He was a young man not at all of a common character, nor of common talents. Not content with following the usual course of studies for his profession, he added to these some of his own choice, and of an obsolete date. He acquired a considerable knowledge of the Saxon tongue; and also took the greatest interest in whatever remained of the ancient literature of his native land; he had, indeed, an almost extravagant love of whatever was Welsh, considering many of the fragments of B the bards not at all inferior to the finest classica antiquity. He was, too, by no means a contemp and would probably, could he have devoted more cultivation of the art, have become a very good po only indulged his approaches to the Muses in what w his leisure hours, and then his principal delight in to endeavour to transfer into English verse the b ments of his beloved country. 66 He was very fond of old black-letter books, and s as most men are merely acquainted with by se names mentioned by authors who are themselv antiquated. He had cultivated an intimacy with the writings of Bede, Malmesbury, Robert of Glouc and knew the old satirical poem in Latin verse, “T of Fooles," published in the days of Henry the Eigh by heart; and Chaucer, I believe, he could quote page. He was, without exception, the most ind student in obsolete lore then at Oxford. Nor di with the old historians and poets; for chance havi into his hands the astrological works of Cornelius he found so much in them to pique his curiosity in t of a forgotten science, that, combined as were the w Agrippa with astronomy, they excited in him a v wandering desire to go somewhat deeply into th could he find time to do so. There was a spirit of too, about the pages of Agrippa, which seemed to i much was left untold, much to be found out by the of an inquiring mind; and this had a wondrous eff fancy of poor Charles, who was, in his way, a sor Quixote; so that at the next long vacation Charles t with him Agrippa and some other writers of the sa and many a midnight hour did he devote to the astrology. With an ordinary mind, with one more by an intercourse with society, such a study would h productive only of mirth, but with him it was rep danger; for Charles, who had buried himself am books at Oxford, was totally ignorant of the world; at home, if he quitted his mother's fireside, it wa exchange her company for a solitary ramble over m and through woods, and to brood over his own strang The enthusiastic and poetic temperament of Charles inclined him to credulity, and to that undefined f |