blance in the style,
which may indeed be but a chance, and yet methinks it is sufficiently
marked to warrant such words as our friend hath used."

"Perhaps you will think that this is an imitation also," said Lytton
bitterly, and leaning back in his chair with a morose countenance, he
continued the narrative in this way:--

"Our unfortunate hero had hardly stretched himself upon the straw with
which his dungeon was littered, when a secret door opened in the wall
and a venerable old man swept majestically into the apartment. The
prisoner gazed upon him with astonishment not unmixed with awe, for on
his broad brow was printed the seal of much knowledge--such knowledge as
it is not granted to the son of man to know. He was clad in a long white
robe, crossed and chequered with mystic devices in the Arabic character,
while a high scarlet tiara marked with the square and circle enhanced
his venerable appearance. 'My son,' he said, turning his piercing and
yet dreamy gaze upon Sir Overbeck, 'all things lead to nothing, and
nothing is the foundation of all things. Cosmos is impenetrable. Why
then should we exist?'

"Astounded at this weighty query, and at the philosophic demeanour of
his visitor, our hero made shift to bid him welcome and to demand his
name and quality. As the old man answered him his voice rose and fell in
musical cadences, like the sighing of the east wind, while an ethereal
and aromatic vapour pervaded the apartment.

"'I am the eternal non-ego,' he answered. 'I am the concentrated
negative--the everlasting essence of nothing. You see in me that
which existed before the beginning of matter many years before the
commencement of time. I am the algebraic _x_ which represents the
infinite divisibility of a finite particle.'

"Sir Overbeck felt a shudder as though an ice-cold hand had been placed
upon his brow. 'What is your message?' he whispered, falling prostrate
before his mysterious visitor.

"'To tell you that the eternities beget chaos, and that the immensities
are at the mercy of the divine ananke. Infinitude crouches before a
personality. The mercurial essence is the prime mover in spirituality,
and the thinker is powerless before the pulsating inanity. The cosmical
procession is terminated only by the unknowable and unpronounceable'----

"May I ask, Mr. Smollett, what you find to laugh at?"

"Gad zooks, master," cried Smollett, who had been sniggering for some
time back. "It seems to me that th