.
Many people will no doubt remember the shock which the news of the
premature death of this individual, when announced in Europe, made.
It took place at Palermo in 1853. More than that I am not at liberty
to state.

"My reasons for this were as follows," said his host. "I meditated a
retirement from the world of a kind which should be absolute, which
should excite no inquiries, no interest, except a retrospective one.
To have merely disappeared would not have suited my purpose; search
would have been instituted. The connections and influence of my
family would have made such a plan liable to constant disaster. From
Palermo, after superintending the making of my tombstone, I came
straight back here, to a house which I had already prepared for
myself under an anonymous name. I travelled with the utmost secrecy;
I married, as you have seen, a native wife; and from that day to this
I have never beheld a European face but yours. Your arrival was so
unexpected as to shiver resolve and habit; but I have no reason
to regret, as far as I can see, my confidence. I feel that I can
unreservedly trust you.

"You will no doubt wonder as to my aim in executing this hazardous
and Quixotic project. I do not mind telling you now, at this lapse
of time, though I have never before opened my reasons to any one,
because I think that I observe in you traces of that temper which
led me to take the step.

"It seemed to me that Western life had got into a confusion and
complication from which nothing could deliver it. The principles now
incorporated with the very existence of the most influential men in
it seemed to me to be radically erroneous, and the disposition of the
Western mind is of a kind which augments with indefinite rapidity the
strength of any prevalent idea.

"What I mean is this. May I explain by a quotation? A sentence from a
certain review of the poet Coleridge's life and work is as follows:
'Devoted as he was to mystic and ideal contemplation, to abstractions
of mind and spirit, he naturally became untrustworthy in every
relation of life.'

"That represents, in an exaggerated form, the ideal of the Western
mind. They are, though they would not so name themselves, gross
materialists; and the tendency is increasing on them daily and
yearly. Those who protest occasionally against current thought, who
appear like prophets with bitter invective and words of warning on
their lips, are swept away by the tide, and write of tra