ain of your patient?"

"It is so."

We both remained silent some moments, and then, as he disappeared within
my house, I murmured,--

"And when she strives to look beyond the shadow, she sees only me! Is
there some prophet-hint of Nature there also, directing me not to scorn
the secret which a wanderer, so suddenly dropped on my solitude, assures
me that Nature will sometimes reveal to her seeker? And oh! that dark
wanderer--has Nature a marvel more weird than himself?"

(1) "Besides the three great subjects of Newton's labours--the fluxional
calculus, physical astronomy, and optics--a very large portion of his
time, while resident in his college, was devoted to researches of which
scarcely a trace remains. Alchemy, which had fascinated so many eager
and ambitious minds, seems to have tempted Newton with an overwhelming
force. What theories he formed, what experiments he tried, in that
laboratory where, it is said, the fire was scarcely extinguished for
weeks together, will never be known. It is certain that no success
attended his labours; and Newton was not a man--like Kepler--to detail
to the world all the hopes and disappointments, all the crude and
mystical fancies, which mixed themselves up with his career of
philosophy... Many years later we find Newton in correspondence with
Locke, with reference to a mysterious red earth by which Boyle, who
was then recently dead, had asserted that he could effect the grand
desideratum of multiplying gold. By this time, however, Newton's faith
had become somewhat shaken by the unsatisfactory communications which
he had himself received from Boyle on the subject of the golden recipe,
though he did not abandon the idea of giving the experiment a further
trial as soon as the weather should become suitable for furnace
experiments."--Quarterly Review, No. 220, pp. 125, 126.

(2) Southey, in his "Doctor," vol. vi. p. 2, reports the conversation of
Sir Kenelm Digby with Descartes, in which the great geometrician said,
"That as for rendering man immortal, it was what he could not venture
to promise, but that he was very sure he could prolong his life to the
standard of the patriarchs." And Southey adds, "that St. Evremond, to
whom Digby repeated this, says that this opinion of Descartes was well
known both to his friends in Holland and in France." By the stress
Southey lays on this hearsay evidence, it is clear that he was not
acquainted with the works and biography of Descartes,