in this
age of science, has made no perceptible progress since the days of
its earliest teachers--had I said, in the true humility of genuine
knowledge, 'these alchemists were men of genius and thought; we owe to
them nearly all the grand hints of our chemical science,--is it likely
that they would have been wholly drivellers and idiots in the one faith
they clung to the most?'--had I said that, I might now have no fear
of losing my Lilian. Why, after all, should there not be in Nature one
primary essence, one master substance; in which is stored the specific
nutriment of life?"

Thus incoherently muttering to the woods what my pride of reason would
not have suffered me gravely to say to my fellow-men, I fatigued my
tormented spirits into a gloomy calm, and mechanically retraced my
steps at the decline of day. I seated myself at the door of my solitary
log-hut, lean ing my cheek upon my hand, and musing. Wearily I looked
up, roused by a discord of clattering hoofs and lumbering wheels on the
hollow-sounding grass-track. A crazy groaning vehicle, drawn by four
horses, emerged from the copse of gum-trees,--fast, fast along the road,
which no such pompous vehicle had traversed since that which had
borne me--luxurious satrap for an early colonist--to my lodge in the
wilderness. What emigrant rich enough to squander in the hire of such
an equipage more than its cost in England, could thus be entering on my
waste domain? An ominous thrill shot through me.

The driver--perhaps some broken-down son of luxury in the Old World, fit
for nothing in the New World but to ply, for hire, the task that might
have led to his ruin when plied in sport--stopped at the door of my hut,
and called out, "Friend, is not this the great Fenwick Section, and is
not yonder long pile of building the Master's house?"

Before I could answer I heard a faint voice, within the vehicle,
speaking to the driver; the last nodded, descended from his seat, opened
the carriage-door, and offered his arm to a man, who, waving aside the
proffered aid, descended slowly and feebly; paused a moment as if for
breath, and then, leaning on his staff, walked from the road, across
the sward rank with luxuriant herbage, through the little gate in the
new-set fragrant wattle-fence, wearily, languidly, halting often, till
he stood facing me, leaning both wan and emaciated hands upon his staff,
and his meagre form shrinking deep within the folds of a cloak lined
thick with