But what is a description, without a sketch of the weather?—In these Pantheist days especially, when a hero or heroine’s moral state must entirely depend on the barometer, and authors talk as if Christians were cabbages, and a man’s soul as well as his lungs might be saved by sea-breezes and sunshine; or his character developed by wearing guano in his shoes, and training himself against a south wall—we must have a weather description, though, as I shall presently show, one in flat contradiction of the popular theory. Luckily for our information, Lancelot was very much given to watch both the weather and himself, and had indeed, while in his teens, combined the two in a sort of a soul-almanack on the principles just mentioned—somewhat in this style:—
‘Monday, 21st.—Wind S.W., bright sun, mercury at 30½ inches. Felt my heart expanded towards the universe. Organs of veneration and benevolence pleasingly excited; and gave a shilling to a tramp. An inexpressible joy bounded through every vein, and the soft air breathed purity and self-sacrifice through my soul. As I watched the beetles, those children of the sun, who, as divine Shelley says, “laden with light and odour, pass over the gleam of the living grass,” I gained an Eden-glimpse of the pleasures of virtue.
‘N.B. Found the tramp drunk in a ditch. I could not have degraded myself on such a day—ah! how could he?
‘Tuesday, 22d.—Barometer rapidly falling. Heavy clouds in the south-east. My heart sank into gloomy forebodings. Read Manfred, and doubted whether I should live long. The laden weight of destiny seemed to crush down my aching forehead, till the thunderstorm burst, and peace was restored to my troubled soul.’
This was very bad; but to do justice to Lancelot, he had grown out of it at the time when my story begins. He was now in the fifth act of his ‘Werterean’ stage; that sentimental measles, which all clever men must catch once in their lives, and which, generally, like the physical measles, if taken early, settles their constitution for good or evil; if taken late, goes far towards killing them. Lancelot had found Byron and Shelley pall on his taste and commenced devouring Bulwer and worshipping Ernest Maltravers. He had left Bulwer for old ballads and romances, and Mr. Carlyle’s reviews; was next alternately chivalry-mad; and Germany-mad; was now reading hard at physical science; and on the whole, trying to become a great man, without any very clear notion of what a great man ought to be. Real education he never had had. Bred up at home under his father, a rich merchant, he had gone to college with a large stock of general information, and a particular mania for dried plants, fossils, butterflies, and sketching, and some such creed as this:—
That he was very clever.
That he ought to make his fortune.
That a great many things were very pleasant—beautiful things among the rest.
That it was a fine thing to be ‘superior,’ gentleman-like, generous, and courageous.
That a man ought to be religious.