ng; and it feeds now rather upon the
recollections of what has been, than ventures forward on a sea of
untried and strange expectation. As for my studies! how can you, who
have, and in no moderate draught, drank of the old stream of Castaly,
how can you ask me now to change them? Are not the ancients my food, my
aliment, my solace in sorrow--my sympathizers, my very benefactors,
in joy? Take them away from me, and you take away the very winds which
purify and give motion to the obscure and silent current of my life.
Besides, my Pelham, it cannot have escaped your observation, that there
is little in my present state which promises a long increase of days:
the few that remain to me must glide away like their predecessors;
and whatever be the infirmities of my body, and the little harassments
which, I am led to suspect, do occasionally molest the most fortunate,
who link themselves unto the unstable and fluctuating part of creation,
which we term women, more especially in an hymeneal capacity--whatever
these may be, I have my refuge and my comforter in the golden-souled
and dreaming Plato, and the sententious wisdom of the less imaginative
Seneca. Nor, when I am reminded of my approaching dissolution by the
symptoms which do mostly at the midnight hour press themselves upon me,
is there a small and inglorious pleasure in the hope that I may meet
hereafter, in those islands of the blest which they dimly dreamt of, but
which are opened unto my vision, without a cloud, or mist, or shadow
of uncertainty and doubt, with those bright spirits which we do now
converse with so imperfectly; that I may catch from the very lips of
Homer the unclouded gorgeousness of fiction, and from the accents of
Archimedes, the unadulterated calculations of truth."

Clutterbuck ceased, and the glow of his enthusiasm diffused itself over
his sunken eye and consumptive cheek. The boy, who had sat apart, and
silent, during our discourse, laid his head upon the table, and sobbed
audibly; and I rose, deeply affected, to offer to one for whom they
were, indeed, unavailing, the wishes and blessing of an eager, but not
hardened disciple of the world. We parted: on this earth we can never
meet again. The light has wasted itself away beneath the bushel. It
will be six weeks to-morrow since the meek and noble-minded academician
breathed his last.

CHAPTER LXIV.

'Tis but a single murder.--Lillo: Fatal Curiosity.

It was in a melancholy and thoughtf