aken alarm. Idris must not see him in this state. Clara,
though only twelve years old, was rendered, through extreme sensibility, so
prudent and careful, that I felt secure in entrusting the charge of him to
her, and it was my task to prevent Idris from observing their absence. I
administered the fitting remedies, and left my sweet niece to watch beside
him, and bring me notice of any change she should observe.

I then went to Idris, contriving in my way, plausible excuses for remaining
all day in the Castle, and endeavouring to disperse the traces of care from
my brow. Fortunately she was not alone. I found Merrival, the astronomer,
with her. He was far too long sighted in his view of humanity to heed the
casualties of the day, and lived in the midst of contagion unconscious of
its existence. This poor man, learned as La Place, guileless and
unforeseeing as a child, had often been on the point of starvation, he, his
pale wife and numerous offspring, while he neither felt hunger, nor
observed distress. His astronomical theories absorbed him; calculations
were scrawled with coal on the bare walls of his garret: a hard-earned
guinea, or an article of dress, was exchanged for a book without remorse;
he neither heard his children cry, nor observed his companion's emaciated
form, and the excess of calamity was merely to him as the occurrence of a
cloudy night, when he would have given his right hand to observe a
celestial phenomenon. His wife was one of those wondrous beings, to be
found only among women, with affections not to be diminished by misfortune.
Her mind was divided between boundless admiration for her husband, and
tender anxiety for her children--she waited on him, worked for them, and
never complained, though care rendered her life one long-drawn, melancholy
dream.

He had introduced himself to Adrian, by a request he made to observe some
planetary motions from his glass. His poverty was easily detected and
relieved. He often thanked us for the books we lent him, and for the use of
our instruments, but never spoke of his altered abode or change of
circumstances. His wife assured us, that he had not observed any
difference, except in the absence of the children from his study, and to
her infinite surprise he complained of this unaccustomed quiet.

He came now to announce to us the completion of his Essay on the
Pericyclical Motions of the Earth's Axis, and the precession of the
equinoctial points. If an old Roma