This practice of castle-building had been the habit of Castellanus from his boyhood. It gave him a strange unsocial turn and made him shun the inmates of his father's house. He fled all company, and the pleasures which others pursue were rarely pleasures to him. One enjoyment he had which never palled. Some lonely seat beside a "wimpling burn" or waterfall, where human sounds fell distantly; there with book in hand, he drank in the lulling music with which such a place is fraught; there would he draw forth, unseen, some old romance with worn and dusky lid, of "haunted Priories" with bloody hand, or dark "Udolpho" with its deep mysteries, its gliding ghosts, and secret pannels. Then would fall the curtain on this mortal vale and all its hateful realities, and his rapt soul would revel in the high wrought tale of fancy. For him these fictions had an unspeakable charm--gallant youths were his companions. He trod with them over Alps and Appenines, where banditti lurked amid the dreary forests and lights were seen to glance and disappear. Soft maidens, too, were there, whose superhuman charms won every heart; encompassed by ten thousand dangers, he could not leave them, until he saw them safely locked in love's triumphant arms. Though a very ugly fellow, he had deceived himself into the belief that he should one day or other marry one of these delightful creatures, and had even settled that her name should be Julia, and thought he should be one of the happiest fellows upon earth; but, Mr. Editor, who do you think he now is? a clodhopper!! aye a miserable clodhopper! The owner of land and negroes!! In that one sentence, I sum up all of human misery--and what do you think is his wife's name? Peggy! Phœbus what a name! "Cobblers! take warning by this cobbler's end."