Shortly after the disastrous¹ termination of Scythrop’s passion for Miss Emily Girouette, Mr Glowry found himself, much against his will, involved in a lawsuit², which compelled him to dance attendance on the High Court of Chancery. Scythrop was left alone at Nightmare Abbey. He was a burnt child, and dreaded³ the fire of female eyes. He wandered about the ample pile, or along the garden-terrace, with ‘his cogitative⁴ faculties⁵ immersed in cogibundity of cogitation⁶.’ The terrace terminated at the south-western tower, which, as we have said, was ruinous and full of owls⁷. Here would Scythrop take his evening seat, on a fallen fragment of mossy stone, with his back resting against the ruined wall — a thick canopy⁹ of ivy¹⁰, with an owl⁸ in it, over his head — and the Sorrows of Werter in his hand. He had some taste for romance reading before he went to the university, where, we must confess, in justice to his college, he was cured of the love of reading in all its shapes; and the cure would have been radical¹¹, if disappointment in love, and total solitude¹², had not conspired¹³ to bring on a relapse. He began to

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