Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month
he would be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the
Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature
and metaphysics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took such
studies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn with
the rest, and it had been in a month of anatomical ardor without the
possibility of a subject that he had proposed to Grammer Oliver the
terms she had mentioned to her mistress.

As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with Winterborne,
he had lately plunged into abstract philosophy with much zest; perhaps
his keenly appreciative, modern, unpractical mind found this a realm
more to his taste than any other. Though his aims were desultory,
Fitzpiers's mental constitution was not without its admirable side; a
keen inquirer he honestly was, even if the midnight rays of his lamp,
visible so far through the trees of Hintock, lighted rank literatures
of emotion and passion as often as, or oftener than, the books and
materiel of science.

But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the loneliness
of Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his impressionable nature.
Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, is
tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, given certain
conditions, but these are not the conditions which attach to the life
of a professional man who drops down into such a place by mere
accident. They were present to the lives of Winterborne, Melbury, and
Grace; but not to the doctor's. They are old association--an almost
exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance with every object,
animate and inanimate, within the observer's horizon. He must know all
about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have
traversed the fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose
creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands
planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses
and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect that
particular brake; what domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or
disappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the mansion, the
street, or on the green. The spot may have beauty, grandeur,
salubrity, convenience; but if it lack memories it will ultimately pall
upon him who settles there without opportunity of intercourse with his
kind.

In such c