ad once written an
absurd letter asking a lady, who hoped to marry a duke, to go to
South America with him. This letter had been his only adventure.

He was like a bookcase, a store of silent learning, with this
difference--from the bookcase much may be extracted, from Mr. Edmund
Collier nothing. He reminded you of a dry well, a London fog, an
abandoned quarry, the desert of Sahara, and the North Pole; of all
dull and lugubrious things he seemed the type. Nature had not
afflicted him with passions nor any original thought, he therefore
lived an exemplary existence, his mind fortified with exemplary
opinions, doctrines, and old saws.

"I wonder if he is alive," Mike had once said.

"_He, he, tout au plus_," Harding had replied, sardonically.

Collier was now learning Sanscrit and writing an article for the
_Quarterly_. L'Estrange used, as he said, "to dig at him," and after
many exhausting efforts brought up interesting facts to the effect
that he had just finished his treatise on the Greek participle, and
was about to launch a volume of verses mainly addressed to children.

Collier had once possessed considerable property, but he had invested
some in a newspaper of which he was editor, and he had squandered
much in vague speculation. From the account he gave of his losses it
was difficult to decide whether he had been moved by mercenary or
charitable temptations. Now only the merest competence remained. He
lived in a small garret where no solicitor had penetrated, studying
uninteresting literatures, dimly interested in all that the world did
not care for. He lived in the gloom of present failure, embittered by
the memory of past successes, wearied with long illness, and
therefore constrained to live like a hermit, never appearing anywhere
except in Hall's rooms.

Even Mr. Horace Baird, the recluse of the Temple, was sometimes met
in Hall's chambers. When he lifted his hat, the white locks growing
amid the black, magnificent masses of hair caught the eye, and set
the mind thinking on the brevity of youth, or wondering what
ill-fortune had thus done the work of time. A passing glance told you
that he was unsuccessful in his profession and unfortunate in his
life, and if you spoke to him, an affected gaiety of manner confirmed
the truth of the first impression. Near him sat a patriarchal
barrister who had travelled in the colonies, had had political
appointments, and in vague hopes of further political appointments