ure.

So the talk went merrily on. Shelley said it made little difference
whether Italian or German literature were the more worthy, for all
literature, what was it but vain trifling? What is the study of
language but the study of words, of phrases, of the names of things?
How much better and wiser to study things themselves!

"I inquired," says Hogg, "a little bewildered, how this was to be
effected. He answered, 'Through the physical sciences, and especially
through chemistry,' and raising his voice, his face flushing as he
spoke, he discoursed, with a degree of animation that far outshone his
zeal in defense of the Germans, of chemistry and chemical analysis."
While this is going on Hogg studies the youthful speaker. What manner
of man is this brilliant guest? "It was a sum of many contradictions.
His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones were large and
strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much that he seemed of low
stature. His clothes were expensive and made after the most approved
mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His
gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even
awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was
delicate and almost feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was
tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn,
as he said, in shooting. His features, his whole face and
particularly his head, were, in fact, unusually small, yet the last
appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and in
fits of absence, and in the agonies (if I may use the word) of anxious
thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands, or passed his
fingers quickly through his locks unconsciously, so that it was
singularly wild and rough. In times when it was the mode to imitate
stage-coachmen as closely as possible in costume, and when the hair
was invariably cropped, like that of our soldiers, this eccentricity
was very striking. His features were not symmetrical (the mouth,
perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the whole extremely
powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid
and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with in any other
countenance. Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the
intellectual, for there was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and
especially (though this will surprise many) that air of profound
religious veneration that characterizes th