This brings us to the blossoming and critical season of the system. Behold him on the edge of youth, beautiful and strong in body, guileless and pure. He takes to blushing, long vigils, and consumes paper--all dangerous signs. The father is distressed, and orders him to burn his poetic effusions, deciding, since the mention of love is dangerous at this age, to put everyone at Raynham on their guard. Servants in love are dismissed, the others are ordered to be discreet and avoid kissing. The visits of a hopeless curate, in love with Mrs. Doria, are interdicted, and this excellent lady is ordered to remove her daughter from the Abbey. In this virtuous solitude Richard becomes wayward and miserable, rides like fire about the country, and has discovered the nothingness of all things. Adrian reports him as extraordinarily cynical. He startles Sir Austin in sentimental fooling with Lady Blandish’s hand, and finds he has discovered the secret of life. He discourses pensively with other stricken males about women’s names, and here we come upon the beautiful introduction of Lucy, the second of the immortal duet of Meredith. Who does not remember that lovely passage beginning?-- ‘Above green, flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds.’ This preludes the divine love-scenes, the sweet romance of boy and maid, in a setting of fair landscape, described as no other pen can describe English scenery. To analyze these chapters, or select any passages by preference, were as idle as to attempt to catch a sunray or sketch a flying cloud. They are written in sunlight to the music of love. To quote from them would be to spoil their beauty. As we read, it is not only on Richard that the gracious glory of heaven has fallen. We, too, are under the spell, and, while we read on, remember all we had thought forgotten and dead in the fold of forgotten years. But Lucy is Farmer Blaize’s niece, and consequently no match for a baronet’s son. Sir Austin has gone up to London in search of a bride worthy the high gift of his son’s untainted youth. His adventures are inimitably recorded. We delight in his interviews with Lawyer Thompson, in his unmasking of that harmless young scamp Master Ripton, and, above all, in his discovery of a suitable bride, when a few years have been added, in the daughter of one Mrs. Caroline Grandison, a female system-creator, whom the author presents as less amiable than her brother-perfecter of humanity. ‘A perfect woman mirrored in her progeny,’ Adrian describes her, and admits that he would prefer her to her progeny. The fates and his father conspire awhile against Richard, and after separation, illness and other discomposing events, he outwits his enemies and runs off with a bride of his own choice--Lucy, the rustic maid.