Men--but especially Frenchmen--may be inclined to suppose, with Balzac's gamblers, when they first beheld Raphael, that there was, under his melancholy aspect, "quelque horrible mystère;" and imagine it proceeded from some "douleur inouïe." Neither of those suppositions, however, would be correct. There was no one point in his history or situation, that should have produced anything like gloom. Morley Ernstein was born to wealth and honour; his father had died early, leaving but one child, to the care of a fond but a wise mother, who, though young and beautiful at her husband's death, kept, throughout the rest of her life, the colours of mourning in her garments and in her heart. Some six years before the time of which we now speak, she too had left this world for another state of being, and her son had fallen into hands of guardians, somewhat strict, but still prudent and kind. They had seen that his talents were great, that his mind approached, if it did not absolutely reach, the height of genius, and they had taken care that it should have such cultivation as the land afforded. They were as conscientious with the young baronet's property as with his intellect; and the old family-house had been left in the care of two faithful good women, who had withered in the service of his ancestors, and who now shewed themselves scrupulous in maintaining everything in the same precise order, and clean propriety which had been kept up during the life of the lady of the mansion. The guardians of Morley Ernstein had resisted all his entreaties to let him pass the vacations of school and college in his ancestral house; but on the day that he was one-and-twenty, a carriage and four horses were at the door of his temporary abode before six in the morning, and ere night he was in the dwelling of his youth. Everything had been prepared to receive him, and he had hastened from room to room, while all the moonlight joy of memory lit up each chamber with associations from the past. He slept little, and rose on the following day, to go through the accounts of guardians and executors, and he found, as paper after paper was laid before him, new cause to applaud their care and wisdom--new reason to look upon his situation as one of the brightest that man could fill. The subsequent night he slept soundly; but now, when he rose on the day we have mentioned, which was the one that succeeded, he sat in the large drawing-room, where his mother used to pass the morning, with his head resting on his hand, the broad, fine forehead contracted, the bright dark eyes full of melancholy, the corners of his mouth turned down, gazing at things he did not see, and forgetting all the bright expectations of youth, and all the joys that hope had spread out before him.