lugged a
considerable heap of them around him. That one which specially claims
his attention--my best bound quarto--is spread upon a piece of bedroom
furniture readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him pore over
it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with only one article of attire to
separate him from the condition in which Archimedes, according to the
popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry. He had discovered a
very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories of a very
important period. As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face from
the book with an almost painful expression of grave eagerness, it
occurred to me that I had seen something like the scene in Dutch
paintings of the temptation of St Anthony.

Suppose the scene changed to a pleasant country-house, where the
enlivening talk has make a guest forget

"The lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,"

that lie between him and his place of rest. He must be instructed in his
course, but the instruction reveals more difficulties than it removes,
and there is much doubt and discussion, which Papaverius at once clears
up as effectually as he had ever dispersed a cloud of logical sophisms;
and this time the feat is performed by a stroke of the thoroughly
practical, which looks like inspiration--he will accompany the forlorn
traveller, and lead him through the difficulties of the way--for have
not midnight wanderings and musings made him familiar with all its
intricacies? Roofed by a huge wideawake, which makes his tiny figure
look like the stalk of some great fungus, with a lantern of more than
common dimensions in his hand, away he goes down the wooded path, up the
steep bank, along the brawling stream, and across the waterfall--and
ever as he goes there comes from him a continued stream of talk
concerning the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and other kindred matters.
Surely if we two were seen by any human eyes, it must have been supposed
that some gnome, or troll, or kelpie was luring the listener to his
doom. The worst of such affairs as this was the consciousness that, when
left, the old man would continue walking on until, weariness overcoming
him, he would take his rest, wherever that happened, like some poor
mendicant. He used to denounce, with his most fervent eloquence, that
barbarous and brutal provision of the law of England which rendered
sleeping in the open air an act of vagrancy, a