help observing an
uncommon dejection and anxiety in my countenance, and affectionately enquired
into the reason. I endeavoured to evade his questions, but my youth and
ignorance of the world gave me little advantage for that purpose. Beside this, I
had been accustomed to view Mr. Collins with considerable attachment, and I
conceived from the nature of his situation that there could be but small
impropriety in making him my confident in the present instance. I repeated to
him minutely every thing that had passed, and concluded with a solemn
declaration that, though treated with caprice, I was not anxious for myself: no
inconvenience or danger should ever lead me to a pusillanimous behaviour; and I
felt only for my patron, who, with every advantage for happiness, and being in
the highest degree worthy of it, seemed destined to undergo unmerited distress.
    In answer to my communication Mr. Collins informed me that some incidents of
a nature similar to that which I related had fallen under his own knowledge, and
that from the whole he could not help concluding that our unfortunate patron was
at times disordered in his intellects. Alas, continued he, it was not always
thus! Ferdinando Falkland was once the gayest of the gay. Not indeed of that
frothy sort, who excite contempt instead of admiration, and whose levity argues
thoughtlessness rather than felicity. His gaiety was always accompanied with
dignity. It was the gaiety of the hero and the scholar. It was chastened with
reflexion and sensibility, and never lost sight either of good taste or
humanity. Such as it was however, it denoted a genuine hilarity of heart,
imparted an inconceivable brilliancy to his company and conversation, and
rendered him the perpetual delight of the diversified circles he then willingly
frequented. You see nothing of him, my dear Williams, but the ruin of that
Falkland, who was courted by sages, and adored by the fair. His youth,
distinguished in its outset by the most unusual promise, is tarnished. His
sensibility is shrunk up and withered by events the most disgustful to his
feelings. His mind was fraught with all the rhapsodies of visionary honour; and
in his sense nothing but the grosser part, the mere shell of Falkland, was
capable of surviving the wound that his pride has sustained.
    These reflexions of my friend Collins strongly tended to inflame my
curiosity, and I requested him to enter into a more copious explanation. With
this request he readily complied; as conceiving that, whatever delicacy it
became him to exercise in ordinary cases, it would be out of place in my
situation, and thinking it not improbable that Mr. Falkland,