his youthful companion with a look half of pity, half
of sympathy, and shrugged up his shoulders as he replied - »Wait, young man -
wait till your bark has been battered by the storm of sixty years of mortal
vicissitude: you will learn by that time to reef your sails, that she may obey
the helm; - or, in the language of this world, you will find distresses enough,
endured and to endure, to keep your feelings and sympathies in full exercise,
without concerning yourself more in the fate of others than you cannot possibly
avoid.«
    »Well, Mr. Oldbuck, it may be so; - but as yet I resemble you more in your
practice than in your theory, for I cannot help being deeply interested in the
fate of the family we have just left.«
    »And well you may,« replied Oldbuck. »Sir Arthur's embarrassments have of
late become so many and so pressing, that I am surprised you have not heard of
them. And then his absurd and expensive operations carried on by this
High-German landlouper, Dousterswivel« -
    »I think I have seen that person, when, by some rare chance, I happened to
be in the coffee-room at Fairport; - a tall, beetle-browed, awkward-built man,
who entered upon scientific subjects, as it appeared to my ignorance at least,
with more assurance than knowledge - was very arbitrary in laying down and
asserting his opinions, and mixed the terms of science with a strange jargon of
mysticism. A simple youth whispered me that he was an Illuminé, and carried on
an intercourse with the invisible world.«
    »O, the same - the same. He has enough of practical knowledge to speak
scholarly and wisely to those of whose intelligence he stands in awe; and, to
say the truth, this faculty, joined to his matchless impudence, imposed upon me
for some time when I first knew him. But I have since understood, that when he
is among fools and womankind, he exhibits himself as a perfect charlatan - talks
of the magisterium - of sympathies and antipathies - of the cabala - of the
divining-rod - and all the trumpery with which the Rosicrucians cheated a darker
age, and which, to our eternal disgrace, has in some degree revived in our own.
My friend Heavysterne knew this fellow abroad, and unintentionally (for he, you
must know, is, God bless the mark! a sort of believer) let me into a good deal
of his real character. Ah! were I caliph for