n his heart still gazed with yearning at the clouds which floated
in Swedenborg's heaven, he had not yet acquired the necessary powers to
produce a coherent system, compactly cast in a piece, as it were. Hence
certain inconsistencies that have left their stamp even on the sketch
here given of his first attempts. Still, incomplete as his work may
have been, was it not the rough copy of a science of which he would have
investigated the secrets at a later time, have secured the foundations,
have examined, deduced, and connected the logical sequence?

Six months after the confiscation of the _Treatise on the Will_ I left
school. Our parting was unexpected. My mother, alarmed by a feverish
attack which for some months I had been unable to shake off, while my
inactive life induced symptoms of _coma_, carried me off at four or
five hours' notice. The announcement of my departure reduced Lambert to
dreadful dejection.

"Shall I ever seen you again?" said he in his gentle voice, as he
clasped me in his arms. "You will live," he went on, "but I shall die.
If I can, I will come back to you."

Only the young can utter such words with the accent of conviction that
gives them the impressiveness of prophecy, of a pledge, leaving a terror
of its fulfilment. For a long time indeed I vaguely looked for the
promised apparition. Even now there are days of depression, of doubt,
alarm, and loneliness, when I am forced to repel the intrusion of that
sad parting, though it was not fated to be the last.

When I crossed the yard by which we left, Lambert was at one of the
refectory windows to see me pass. By my request my mother obtained leave
for him to dine with us at the inn, and in the evening I escorted him
back to the fatal gate of the college. No lover and his mistress ever
shed more tears at parting.

"Well, good-bye; I shall be left alone in this desert!" said he,
pointing to the playground where two hundred boys were disporting
themselves and shouting. "When I come back half dead with fatigue from
my long excursions through the fields of thought, on whose heart can
I rest? I could tell you everything in a look. Who will understand me
now?--Good-bye! I could wish I had never met you; I should not know all
I am losing."

"And what is to become of me?" said I. "Is not my position a dreadful
one? _I_ have nothing here to uphold me!" and I slapped my forehead.

He shook his head with a gentle gesture, gracious and sad, and we
pa