hich is worth acquiring at the price of a brain fever. There
are many sordid tragedies in the life of the student, above all if he be
poor, or drunken, or both; but nothing more moves a wise man's pity than
the case of the lad who is in too much hurry to be learned. And so, for
the sake of a moral at the end, I will call up one more figure, and have
done. A student, ambitious of success by that hot, intemperate manner of
study that now grows so common, read night and day for an examination.
As he went on, the task became more easy to him, sleep was more easily
banished, his brain grew hot and clear and more capacious, the necessary
knowledge daily fuller and more orderly. It came to the eve of the
trial, and he watched all night in his high chamber, reviewing what he
knew, and already secure of success. His window looked eastward, and
being (as I said) high up, and the house itself standing on a hill,
commanded a view over dwindling suburbs to a country horizon. At last my
student drew up his blind, and still in quite a jocund humour, looked
abroad. Day was breaking, the east was tinging with strange fires, the
clouds breaking up for the coming of the sun; and at the sight, nameless
terror seized upon his mind. He was sane, his senses were undisturbed;
he saw clearly, and knew what he was seeing, and knew that it was
normal; but he could neither bear to see it nor find the strength to
look away, and fled in panic from his chamber into the enclosure of the
street. In the cool air and silence, and among the sleeping houses, his
strength was renewed. Nothing troubled him but the memory of what had
passed, and an abject fear of its return.

"Gallo canente, spes redit,
Aegris salus refunditur,
Lapsis fides revertitur,"

as they sang of old in Portugal in the Morning Office. But to him that
good hour of cockcrow, and the changes of the dawn, had brought panic,
and lasting doubt, and such terror as he still shook to think of. He
dared not return to his lodging; he could not eat; he sat down, he rose
up, he wandered; the city woke about him with its cheerful bustle, the
sun climbed overhead; and still he grew but the more absorbed in the
distress of his recollection and the fear of his past fear. At the
appointed hour he came to the door of the place of examination; but when
he was asked, he had forgotten his name. Seeing him so disordered, they
had not the heart to send him away, but gave him a paper and admitted
him