ch the head is
so elaborately bandaged up strays forth, here and there, an arid lock
of hair. The lack of united expression in his features produces an
effect seldom observable in a living face. The eyes are lustreless,
and densely black; or possibly (the suspicion is a startling one) we
are looking into empty eye-sockets! No eyes, no expression, parchment
skin, swathed head, odor of myrrh and cassia, and, dominating all,
this ghastly immobility! Has Doctor Glyphic even now escaped, leaving
us to waste time and sentiment over some worn-out disguise of his?
Nay, if he be not here, we need not seek him further. Having forsaken
this, he can attain no other earthly hiding-place. We must pause here,
and believe either that this dry time-husk is the very last of poor
Hiero, or that a living being which once bore his name has vanished
inward from our reach, and now treads a more real earth than any that
time and space are sovereign over.

Balder (whose perceptions were unlimited by artistic requirements)
probably needed no second glance to assure him that his uncle was a
mummy of many years' standing. But no effort of mental gymnastics
could explain him the fact. Were this real, then was his steamboat
adventure a dream, the revelation of the ring a delusion, and his
water-stained haversack a phantom. He wandered clewless in a maze of
mystery. Nor was this the first paradox he had encountered since
overleaping the brick wall. He began to question whether
supernaturalism had not teen too hastily dismissed by lovers of
wisdom!

Thus do the actors in the play of life plod from one to another
scene, nor once rise to a height whence a glance might survey past and
future. Memory and prophecy are twin sisters,--nay, they are
essentially one muse, whom mankind worships on this side and slights
on that. This is well, for had she but one aspect, the world would be
either too confident or too helpless. But in reviewing a life, one is
apt to make less than due allowance for the helplessness. Thus it is
no prejudice to Balder's intellectual acumen that he failed for a
moment to penetrate the thin disguises of events, and to perceive
relations obvious to the comprehensive view of history. We will take
advantage of his bewildered pause to draw attention to some matters
heretofore neglected.

XXV.

THE HAPPINESS OF MAN.

When Manetho,--who shall no longer perplex us with his theft of a
worthier man's name,--when Manetho felt hi