ABSTRACT
Francesco however was of a gay and companionable frame of mind, in love with ‘quips and jests and youthful jollity,’ and, though he was at the moment perfectly sincere in his protestations, would scarcely have been satisfied to retire into an uninhabited island with his friend, there to dwell in two moss-grown cells by the side of a rippling brook for the rest of their lives. a It happened therefore, somewhat fortunately in respect of the depressed and dejected tone of / mind of Julian, that Bernardino had occasion to send his nephew to Verona, and Francesco solicited his friend to bear him company in the excursion. Julian at first refused the invitation. Though delighted with the society of the Italian boy, and desirous of all occasions of intercourse and intimacy, it seemed to him a violation of what he owed to the memory of Eudocia, that he should for the present yield to amusement, and enter into the distractions and animation of a traveller. Cloudesley however, who upon almost any other occasion would have felt an unwillingness to trust his ward so far out of his sight, forwardly seconded the proposal. He knew that the familiarity of the young with the young was the ordination of nature, and that nothing he could do to relieve the sorrows of Julian, could have half so favourable an effect as such an excursion. Besides that, Julian and himself had suffered under the same calamity, / and would be from time to time recurring to the thought of what they had lost. It would be better that the ideas of his ward should be turned into an entirely new channel.
