s of this
wrong world, that assemblest together in one great heap the woes, the
joys, the elevations, the debasements of the various tribes of man;
mightiest of levellers, confounding in thy whirlpool all ranks, all
minds, the graven labours of knowledge, the straws of the maniac, purple
and rags, the regalities and the loathsomeness of earth,--palace and
lazar-house combined! Grave of the living, where, mingled and massed
together, we couch, but rest not,--"for in that sleep of life what
dreams do come,"--each vexed with a separate vision,--"shadows" which
"grieve the heart," unreal in their substance, but faithful in their
warnings, flitting from the eye, but graving unfleeting memories on
the mind, which reproduce new dreams over and over, until the phantasm
ceases, and the pall of a heavier torpor falls upon the brain, and all
is still and dark and hushed! "From the stir of thy great Babel,"
and the fixed tinsel glare in which sits pleasure like a star, "which
shines, but warms not with its powerless rays," we turn to thy deeper
and more secret haunts. Thy wilderness is all before us--where to choose
our place of rest; and, to our eyes, thy hidden recesses are revealed.

The clock of St. Paul's had tolled the second hour of morning. Within
a small and humble apartment in the very heart of the city, there sat
a writer, whose lucubrations, then obscure and unknown, were destined,
years afterwards, to excite the vague admiration of the crowd and the
deeper homage of the wise. They were of that nature which is slow in
winning its way to popular esteem; the result of the hived and hoarded
knowledge of years; the produce of deep thought and sublime aspirations,
influencing, in its bearings, the interests of the many, yet only
capable of analysis by the judgment of the few. But the stream broke
forth at last from the cavern to the daylight, although the source was
never traced; or, to change the image,--albeit none know the hand which
executed and the head which designed, the monument of a mighty intellect
has been at length dug up, as it were, from the envious earth, the
brighter for its past obscurity, and the more certain of immortality
from the temporary neglect it has sustained.

The room was, as we before said, very small, and meanly furnished; yet
were there a few articles of costliness and luxury scattered about,
which told that the tastes of its owner had not been quite humbled to
the level of his fortunes. One s