ectly remembered. He had seen the book he
wished to refer to in the little study the day before; and he quitted
the library to search for it.

As he was tumbling over some volumes that lay piled on the
writing-table, he felt a student's curiosity to discover what now
constituted his host's favourite reading. He was surprised to observe
that the greater portion of the works that, by the doubled leaf and the
pencilled reference, seemed most frequently consulted, were not of a
literary nature,--they were chiefly scientific; and astronomy seemed the
chosen science. He then remembered that he had heard Maltravers speaking
to a builder, employed on the recent repairs, on the subject of an
observatory. "This is very strange," thought Cleveland; "he gives up
literature, the rewards of which are in his reach, and turns to science,
at an age too late to discipline his mind to its austere training."

Alas! Cleveland did not understand that there are times in life when
imaginative minds seek to numb and to blunt imagination. Still less did
he feel that, when we perversely refuse to apply our active faculties to
the catholic interests of the world, they turn morbidly into channels of
research the least akin to their real genius. By the collision of
minds alone does each mind discover what is its proper product: left to
ourselves, our talents become but intellectual eccentricities.

Some scattered papers, in the handwriting of Maltravers, fell from one
of the volumes. Of these, a few were but algebraical calculations, or
short scientific suggestions, the value of which Mr. Cleveland's studies
did not enable him to ascertain; but in others they were wild snatches
of mournful and impassioned verse, which showed that the old vein of
poetry still flowed, though no longer to the daylight. These verses
Cleveland thought himself justified in glancing over; they seemed to
portray a state of mind which deeply interested, and greatly saddened
him. They expressed, indeed, a firm determination to bear up against
both the memory and the fear of ill; but mysterious and hinted allusions
here and there served to denote some recent and yet existent struggle,
revealed by the heart only to the genius. In these partial and imperfect
self-communings and confessions, there was the evidence of the pining
affections, the wasted life, the desolate hearth of the lonely man. Yet
so calm was Maltravers himself, even to his early friend, that Cleveland
knew no