But I had gained a friend, and that was a sweet recompense, sweeter to me, by far, than it is found or felt by schoolboys usually. None could know or comprehend the force of my attachment--my dependence upon the attachment of which I felt assured!--none but those who, with an earnest, impetuous nature like my own--doomed to denial from the first, and treated with injustice and unkindness--has felt the pang of a worse privation from the beginning;--the privation of that sustenance, which is the “very be all and end all” of its desire and its life--and the denial of which chills and repels its fervor--throws it back in despondency upon itself--fills it with suspicion, and racks it with a never-ceasing conflict between its apprehension and its hopes. Edgerton supplied a vacuum which my bosom had long felt. He was, however, very unlike, in most respects, to myself. He was rather phlegmatic than ardent--slow in his fancies, and shy in his associations from very fastidiousness. He was too much governed by nice tastes, to be an active or performing youth; and too much restrained by them also, to be a popular one. This, perhaps, was the secret influence which brought us together. A mutual sense of isolation--no matter from what cause--awakened the sympathies between us. Our ties were formed, on my part, simply because I was assured that I should have no rival; and on his, possibly, because he perceived in my haughty reserve of character, a sufficient security that his fastidious sensibilities would not be likely to suffer outrage at my hands. In every other respect our moods and tempers were utterly unlike. I thought him dull, very frequently, when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;--and ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and abstract. He was contemplative--an idealist; I was impetuous and devoted to the real and living world around me, in which I was disposed to mingle with an eagerness which might have been fatal; but for that restraint to which my own distrust of all things and persons habitually subjected me. CHAPTER II. BOY PASSIONS--A PROFESSION CHOSEN.