age and study had thinned, was
soft and fine, like the down of a swan. His hands were white and taper
as the marble hands of the statue of Seneca taking his dying leave of
Paulina. There were no wrinkles on his face, which had become thin and
pale from the long labor of the mind, for it had never been plump. A
few blue and bloodless veins might be traced on the depressed temples;
the light of the fire was reflected on the forehead,--that latest
beauty of man, which thought chisels and polishes unceasingly. There
was in the cheek that delicacy of skin,--that transparency of a face
which has grown old within the shade of walls, and which neither wind
nor sun have ever tanned; the complexion of woman, which gives an
effeminacy to the countenance of old men, and the ethereal, fragile,
and impalpable appearance of a vision, that the slightest breath might
dispel. His calm and well-weighed expressions, naturally set in clear,
concise, and lucid phrase, had all the precision of one who has been
used to careful selection in clothing his thoughts for writing or
dictation. His sentences were interrupted by long pauses, as if to
allow time for them to penetrate the ear, and to be appreciated by the
mind of the listener; he relieved them, every now and then, by graceful
pleasantry, never degenerating into coarseness, as though he purposely
upheld the conversation on these light and sportive wings, to prevent
its being borne down by the weight of too continuous ideas.

LXXIV.

I soon learned to love this charming and talented old man. If I am
destined to attain old age, I should wish to grow old like him. There
was but one thing grieved me as I looked at him,--it was to see him
advancing towards death, without believing in Immortality. The natural
sciences that he had so deeply studied had accustomed his mind to trust
exclusively to the evidence of his senses. Nothing existed for him that
was not palpable; what could not be calculated contained no element of
certitude in his eyes; matter and figures composed his universe;
numbers were his god; the phenomena of Nature were his revelations,
Nature herself his Bible and his gospel; his virtue was instinct, not
seeing that numbers, phenomena, Nature, and virtue are but hieroglyphs
inscribed on the veil of the temple, whose unanimous meaning is--Deity.
Sublime but stubborn minds, who wonderfully ascend the steps of
science, one by one,--but will never pass the last, which leads