ly
witnessed them from the hilltop. This romance was succeeded by another,
and that by another, by which time the sun stood high above us in the
noon-tide sky. Serapion then rose from his seat, and looking into the
distance, said: 'Yonder comes my brother Hilarion, who, in his over
strictness, always blames me for being too much given to the society of
strangers.'

"I understood the hint, and took my leave, asking if I should be
allowed to pay him another visit. Serapion answered with a gentle
smile, 'My friend, I thought you would be eager to get away from this
wilderness, so little adapted to your mode of life. But if it is your
pleasure to take up your abode for a time in my neighbourhood, you will
always be welcome to my cottage and my little garden. Perhaps it may be
granted to me to convert him who came to me as an adversary. Farewell,
my friend.'

"I am wholly unable to characterize the impression which my visit to
him had made upon me. Whilst his condition, his methodical madness in
which he found the joy of his life, produced the weirdest effect upon
me, his extraordinary poetical genius filled me with amazement, and his
kindly, peaceful happiness, instinct with the quietest resignation of
the purest mind, touched me unspeakably. I thought of Ophelia's
sorrowful words:

"O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword:
The expectancy and rose of this fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observ'd of all observers! quite, quite down!
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth,
Blasted with ecstasy."

Yet I could not make plaint against the Omnipotence, which probably
had, in this mysterious fashion, steered his bark away from reefs,
which might have wrecked it, into this secure haven.

"The oftener I went to see him, the more attached to him I became. I
always found him happy, and disposed to converse, and I took great care
never again to essay my role of the psychological doctor. It was
wonderful with what acuteness and penetration he spoke of life in all
its aspects, and most remarkable of all, how he deduced historical
events from causes wholly remote from all ordinary theories on the
subject. When sometimes--notwithstanding the striking acuteness of
those divinations of his--I to