almud,
and some of the great works of the Arabians. Pooh! all this is mere
learning and translation, and such will never secure immortality.
Translation is at best an echo, and it must be a wonderful echo to be
heard after the lapse of a thousand years. No! all I have already done,
and all I may yet do in the same way, I may reckon as nothing--mere
pastime; something else must be done. I must either write some grand
original work, or conquer an empire; the one just as easy as the other.
But am I competent to do either? Yes, I think I am, under favourable
circumstances. Yes, I think I may promise myself a reputation of a
thousand years, if I do but give myself the necessary trouble. Well! but
what's a thousand years after all, or twice a thousand years? Woe is me!
I may just as well sit still.

"Would I had never been born!" I said to myself; and a thought would
occasionally intrude. But was I ever born? Is not all that I see a
lie--a deceitful phantom? Is there a world, and earth, and sky?
Berkeley's doctrine--Spinosa's doctrine! Dear reader, I had at that time
never read either Berkeley or Spinosa. I have still never read them; who
are they, men of yesterday? "All is a lie--all a deceitful phantom," are
old cries; they come naturally from the mouths of those, who, casting
aside that choicest shield against madness, simplicity, would fain be
wise as God, and can only know that they are naked. This doubting in the
"universal all" is almost coeval with the human race: wisdom, so called,
was early sought after. All is a lie--a deceitful phantom--was said when
the world was yet young; its surface, save a scanty portion, yet
untrodden by human foot, and when the great tortoise yet crawled about.
All is a lie, was the doctrine of Buddh; and Buddh lived thirty centuries
before the wise king of Jerusalem, who sat in his arbours, beside his
sunny fishpools, saying many fine things, and, amongst others, "There is
nothing new under the sun!"

* * * * *

One day, whilst I bent my way to the heath of which I have spoken on a
former occasion, at the foot of the hills which formed it I came to a
place where a wagon was standing, but without horses, the shafts resting
on the ground; there was a crowd about it, which extended half-way up the
side of the neighbouring hill. The wagon was occupied by some half a
dozen men; some sitting, others standing. They were dressed in sober-
coloured habiliments of black or brown,