gradually warmed to its fascinations, and forgot all about his failure very speedily, in a modest amount of fashionable dissipation and the comforts of his club. The Colonel stayed only to spend a day with Ned, and hastened home; and as everything there went fair and softly, and nothing else within the limits of this history requires immediate attention, let us spare a moment to glance after poor Roger, forlorn and alone among his comrades upon the monotonous sea. Among his comrades, and yet alone--more alone than the young man had been during all his life. He had never supposed--he had no means of imagining--the humiliations of this new life. He could gulp the inferior rank, the mortifications of his humble position--he could manage to salute as superiors, totally above him and out of his sphere, the young officers who a year ago would have been too happy to accompany him into the preserves of the Grange, or sit by his side at his godfather's hospitable table. These things he could bear; what Roger could not bear was the perpetual society from which he could not free himself--the constant presence of his "mates," and entire lack of anything like privacy in this existence, of which he had not conceived half the pangs. If he had been able to seek the meanest possible retirement of his own, he could have borne all other grievances cheerfully--but this was impossible; and the life of which every hour sleeping or waking was spent in the rude companionship of men of a class much inferior and a breeding totally different from his own, grew bitter to the young man. He became unnaturally grave and self-absorbed. He attended to the minutest details of his duty with the most scrupulous and rigid care: but the sunshine and the glow of youth died away from him--life spread around him full of vulgar circumstances, unceasing noise, unceasing mirth, a perpetual accompaniment which made his heart sick. He did everything he could to recall his courage--he tried to flatter his imagination with pictures of future distinction; but Roger had not the imagination of a poet; his fancy was not strong enough to carry him out of the midst of the reality which vexed his soul; the pictures grew languid, the hopes feeble. His whole nature retreated within itself, and had to summon its uttermost forces to bear the trial. An experience which he had never looked for deepened his thoughts, and gave a painful development to his mind. His nearest approach to solitude was when he leaned over the side of the ship, and lost the talk of his comrades in the sweep of the waves. Then many a melancholy fancy possessed poor Roger: sometimes he could fancy he saw the face of his godfather gazing at him with a melancholy compunction; and the loyal heart rose, and his own looks did their best to brighten, as if even the departed spirit should not blame itself while he had power to say No. Sometimes it was the good Colonel who looked out of Roger's imagination, with a kind and