he deep; but they were still too strong and too
rapid to allow transparency to the surface. And now he stood in the
sublime world of books, still and earnest as a seer who invokes the
dead; and thus, face to face with knowledge, hourly he discovered how
little he knew. Mr. Prickett lent him such works as he selected and
asked to take home with him. He spent whole nights in reading, and no
longer desultorily. He read no more poetry, no more Lives of Poets. He
read what poets must read if they desire to be great--Sapere principium
et fons,--strict reasonings on the human mind; the relations between
motive and conduct, thought and action; the grave and solemn truths of
the past world; antiquities, history, philosophy. He was taken out of
himself; he was carried along the ocean of the universe. In that ocean,
O seeker, study the law of the tides; and seeing Chance nowhere,
Thought presiding over all, Fate, that dread phantom, shall vanish from
creation, and Providence alone be visible in heaven and on earth!

CHAPTER III.

There was to be a considerable book-sale at a country house one day's
journey from London. Mr. Prickett meant to have attended it on his own
behalf, and that of several gentlemen who had given him commissions for
purchase; but on the morning fixed for his departure, he was seized with
a severe return of his old foe the rheumatism. He requested Leonard to
attend instead of himself. Leonard went, and was absent for the three
days during which the sale lasted. He returned late in the evening, and
went at once to Mr. Prickett's house. The shop was closed; he knocked
at the private entrance; a strange person opened the door to him, and in
reply to his question if Mr. Prickett was at home, said, with a long and
funereal face, "Young man, Mr. Prickett senior is gone to his long home,
but Mr. Richard Prickett will see you."

At this moment a very grave-looking man, with lank hair, looked forth
from the side-door communicating between the shop and the passage, and
then stepped forward. "Come in, sir; you are my late uncle's assistant,
Mr. Fairfield, I suppose?"

"Your late uncle! Heavens, sir, do I understand aright, can Mr. Prickett
be dead since I left London?"

"Died, sir, suddenly, last night. It was an affection of the heart. The
doctor thinks the rheumatism attacked that organ. He had small time to
provide for his departure, and his account-books seem in sad disorder: I
am his nephew and executor.