In his first experience of altered fortune he did nothing but regret the past. It was no compensation to him for his careless sea-life, with all its pleasant associations, to become of a sudden invested with station, and treated with what he deemed over-deference. His reefer's jacket was pleasanter “wear” than his padded frock-coat; the nimble boy who waited on him in the gun-room he thought a far smarter attendant than his obsequious valet; and, with all his midshipman's love of money-spending and squandering, the charm of extravagance was gone when there were no messmates to partake of it; nor did his well-groomed nag and his well- dressed tiger suggest one-half the enjoyment he had often felt in a pony ride over the cliffs of Malta, with some others of his mess, where falls were rife and tumbles frequent. These, I say, were first thoughts, but gradually others took their places. The enervation of a life of ease began soon to show itself, and he felt the power of a certain station. In the allowance his guardian made him, he had a far greater sum at his disposal than he ever possessed before; and in the title of his rank he soon discovered a magic that made the world beneath him very deferential and very obliging. “That boy has been very ill brought up, Mr. Layton; it will be your chief care to instil into him proper notions of the place he is to occupy one of these days,” said an old Earl, one of his guardians, and who was most eager that every trace of his sea life should be eradicated. “Don't let him get spoiled, Layton, because he's a Lord,” said the other guardian, who was an old Admiral. “There's good stuff in the lad, and it would be a thousand pities it should be corrupted.” Layton did his best to obey each; but the task had its difficulties. As to the boy himself, the past and the present, the good and the evil, the frank young middy and the rich lordling, warred and contended in his nature; nor was it very certain at any moment which would ultimately gain the mastery. Such, without dwelling more minutely, was he who now strolled along through shrubbery and parterre, half listless as to the way, but very happy withal, and very light-hearted. There was something in the scene that recalled England to his mind. There were more trees and turf than usually are found in Italian landscape, and there was, half hidden between hazel and alder, a clear, bright river, that brawled and fretted over rocks, or deepened into dark pools, alternately. How the circling eddies of a fast-flowing stream do appeal to young hearts! what music do they hear in the gushing waters! what a story is there in that silvery current as it courses along through waving meadows, or beneath tall mountains, and along some dark and narrow gorge, emblem of life itself in its light and shade, its peaceful intervals and its hours of struggle and conflict.