drunk the liquor, come let us eat the glass! Of
which endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek." Too true!

We reckon it more important to remark that the Professor's Wanderings,
so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear
insight, here first take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That
Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered up
what little remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him: Life has
become wholly a dark labyrinth; wherein, through long years, our Friend,
flying from spectres, has to stumble about at random, and naturally with
more haste than progress.

Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from afar, in this
extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his; the simplest record of which,
were clear record possible, would fill volumes. Hopeless is the
obscurity, unspeakable the confusion. He glides from country to country,
from condition to condition; vanishing and reappearing, no man can
calculate how or where. Through all quarters of the world he wanders,
and apparently through all circles of society. If in any scene, perhaps
difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time, and forms
connections, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. Let him sink
out of sight as Private Scholar (_Privatsirender_), living by the grace
of God in some European capital, you may next find him as Hadjee in the
neighborhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable Phantasmagoria, capricious,
quick-changing; as if our Traveller, instead of limbs and highways,
had transported himself by some wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The
whole, too, imparted emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as that
collection of Street-Advertisements); with only some touch of direct
historical notice sparingly interspersed: little light-islets in the
world of haze! So that, from this point, the Professor is more of an
enigma than ever. In figurative language, we might say he becomes, not
indeed a spirit, yet spiritualized, vaporized. Fact unparalleled in
Biography: The river of his History, which we have traced from its
tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing
current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that terrific Lover's
Leap; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous
clouds of spray! Low down it indeed collects again into pools and
plashes; yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all,
into a general stream.