ands delightedly, as
the colour danced joyously over her cheek and neck.

"I am glad to hear it," quoth Lester; "we shall have him at last beat
even Ellinor in gaiety!"

"That may easily be," sighed Ellinor to herself, as she glided past them
into the house, and sought her own chamber.

CHAPTER V.

A REFLECTION NEW AND STRANGE.--THE STREETS OF LONDON.--A GREAT
MAN'S LIBRARY.--A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE STUDENT AND AN
ACQUAINTANCE OF THE READER'S.--ITS RESULT.

Rollo. Ask for thyself.
Lat. What more can concern me than this?
--The Tragedy of Rollo.

It was an evening in the declining autumn of 1758; some public ceremony
had occurred during the day, and the crowd, which it had assembled was
only now gradually lessening, as the shadows darkened along the streets.
Through this crowd, self-absorbed as usual--with them--not one
of them--Eugene Aram slowly wound his uncompanioned way. What an
incalculable field of dread and sombre contemplation is opened to every
man who, with his heart disengaged from himself, and his eyes accustomed
to the sharp observance of his tribe, walks through the streets of a
great city! What a world of dark and troublous secrets in the breast of
every one who hurries by you! Goethe has said somewhere, that each of
us, the best as the worst, hides within him something--some feeling,
some remembrance that, if known, would make you hate him. No doubt the
saying is exaggerated; but still, what a gloomy and profound sublimity
in the idea!--what a new insight it gives into the hearts of the common
herd!--with what a strange interest it may inspire us for the humblest,
the tritest passenger that shoulders us in the great thoroughfare of
life! One of the greatest pleasures in the world is to walk alone, and
at night, (while they are yet crowded,) through the long lamplit streets
of this huge metropolis. There, even more than in the silence of woods
and fields, seems to me the source of endless, various meditation.

There was that in Aram's person which irresistibly commanded attention.
The earnest composure of his countenance, its thoughtful paleness, the
long hair falling back, the peculiar and estranged air of his whole
figure, accompanied as it was, by a mildness of expression, and that
lofty abstraction which characterises one who is a brooder over his
own heart--a ponderer and a soothsayer to his own dreams;--all these
arrested from time t