either as an
omen of my death, or, worse, as the fore-runner of an attack of mania. I
threw myself passionately back in my chair, and for some moments buried
my face in my hands. When I uncovered my eyes, the apparition was no
longer apparent.

My host, however, had in some degree resumed the calmness of his
demeanor, and questioned me very rigorously in respect to the
conformation of the visionary creature. When I had fully satisfied
him on this head, he sighed deeply, as if relieved of some intolerable
burden, and went on to talk, with what I thought a cruel calmness, of
various points of speculative philosophy, which had heretofore formed
subject of discussion between us. I remember his insisting very
especially (among other things) upon the idea that the principle
source of error in all human investigations lay in the liability of
the understanding to under-rate or to over-value the importance of an
object, through mere mis-admeasurement of its propinquity. "To estimate
properly, for example," he said, "the influence to be exercised on
mankind at large by the thorough diffusion of Democracy, the distance
of the epoch at which such diffusion may possibly be accomplished should
not fail to form an item in the estimate. Yet can you tell me one writer
on the subject of government who has ever thought this particular branch
of the subject worthy of discussion at all?"

He here paused for a moment, stepped to a book-case, and brought forth
one of the ordinary synopses of Natural History. Requesting me then to
exchange seats with him, that he might the better distinguish the fine
print of the volume, he took my armchair at the window, and, opening the
book, resumed his discourse very much in the same tone as before.

"But for your exceeding minuteness," he said, "in describing the
monster, I might never have had it in my power to demonstrate to you
what it was. In the first place, let me read to you a schoolboy
account of the genus Sphinx, of the family Crepuscularia of the order
Lepidoptera, of the class of Insecta--or insects. The account runs thus:

"'Four membranous wings covered with little colored scales of metallic
appearance; mouth forming a rolled proboscis, produced by an elongation
of the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of
mandibles and downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior
by a stiff hair; antennae in the form of an elongated club, prismatic;
abdomen pointed, The De