ndonment. Even the innocent relaxations with
which the austerest minds relieve their accustomed toils, had had no
power to draw him from his beloved researches. The delight monstrari
digito; the gratification of triumphant wisdom; the whispers of an
elevated vanity; existed not for his self-dependent and solitary heart.
He was one of those earnest and high-wrought enthusiasts who now are
almost extinct upon earth, and whom Romance has not hitherto attempted
to pourtray; men not uncommon in the last century, who were devoted to
knowledge, yet disdainful of its fame; who lived for nothing else than
to learn. From store to store, from treasure to treasure, they proceeded
in exulting labour, and having accumulated all, they bestowed nought;
they were the arch-misers of the wealth of letters. Wrapped in
obscurity, in some sheltered nook, remote from the great stir of men,
they passed a life at once unprofitable and glorious; the least part of
what they ransacked would appal the industry of a modern student, yet
the most superficial of modern students might effect more for mankind.
They lived among oracles, but they gave none forth. And yet, even in
this very barrenness, there seems something high; it was a rare and
great spectacle--Men, living aloof from the roar and strife of the
passions that raged below, devoting themselves to the knowledge which is
our purification and our immortality on earth, and yet deaf and blind
to the allurements of the vanity which generally accompanies research;
refusing the ignorant homage of their kind, making their sublime motive
their only meed, adoring Wisdom for her sole sake, and set apart in the
populous universe, like stars, luminous with their own light, but too
remote from the earth on which they looked, to shed over its inmates the
lustre with which they glowed.

From his youth to the present period, Aram had dwelt little in cities
though he had visited many, yet he could scarcely be called ignorant of
mankind; there seems something intuitive in the science which teaches
us the knowledge of our race. Some men emerge from their seclusion, and
find, all at once, a power to dart into the minds and drag forth the
motives of those they see; it is a sort of second sight, born with
them, not acquired. And Aram, it may be, rendered yet more acute by his
profound and habitual investigations of our metaphysical frame, never
quitted his solitude to mix with others, without penetrating into the
b