"In what mood or shape shall he be brought forward? Shall it be as first we met at the table of Lucullus, whereto he was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and anarchical opinions respecting the Golden Ass of Apuleius? No one speaks of waiting dinner for him. He will come and depart at his own sweet will, neither burdened with punctualities nor burdening others by exacting them. The festivities of the afternoon are far on, when a commotion is heard in the hall, as if some dog or other stray animal had forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival; he opens the door and fetches in the little stranger. What can it be? A street-boy of some sort? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a party-colored belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list shoes, covered with snow, for it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers, some one suggests that they are inner linen garments blackened with writing ink, but that Papaverius never

would have been at the trouble so to disguise them. What can be the theory of such a costume? The simplest thing in the world it consisted of the fragments of apparel nearest at hand. Had chance thrown to him a court single-breasted coat, with a bishop's apron, a kilt, and top-boots, in these he would have made his entry.

"The first impression that a boy has appeared vanishes instantly. Though in one of the sweetest and most genial of his essays he shows how every man retains so much in him of the child he originally was - and he himself retained a great deal of that primitive simplicity-it was buried within the depths of his heart — not visible externally. On the contrary, on one occasion when he corrected an erroneous reference to an event as being a century old, by saying that he recollected its occurrence, one felt almost a surprise at the necessary limitation in his age, so old did he appear with his arched brow loaded with thought, and the countless little wrinkles which engrained his skin, gathering thickly round the curiously expressive and subtle lips. These lips are speedily opened by some

casual remark, and presently the flood of talk passes forth from them, free, clear, and continuous -never rising into declamation - never losing a certain mellow earnestness, and all consisting of sentences as exquisitely joined together, as if they were destined to challenge the criticism of the remotest posterity. Still the hours stride over each other, and still flows on the stream of gentle rhetoric, as if it were labitur et labetur in orune volubilis aoum. It is now far into the night, and slight hints and suggestions are propagated about separation and home-going. The topic starts new ideas on the progress of civilization, the effect of habit on men in all ages, and the power of the domestic affections. Descending from generals to the specials, he could testify to the inconvenience of late hours; for was it not the other night that, coming to what was, or what he believed to be, his own door, he knocked and knocked, but the old woman within either could n't or would n't hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme unpleasantness of such a couch? .

"Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-stained and foot-sore, he glided in on us one night like a shadow, the child by the fire gazing on him with round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting that he should get a penny and go home,

a proposal which he subjected to some philosophical criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How far he had wandered since he had last refreshed himself, or even whether he had eaten food that day, were matters on which there was no getting articulate utterance from him. How that wearied, worn little body was to be refreshed was a difficult problem: soft food disagreed with him; the hard he could not eat. Suggestions pointed at length to the solution of that vegetable unguent to which he had given a sort of lustre, and it might be supposed that there were some fifty cases of acute toothache to be treated in the house that night. How many drops? Drops! nonsense! If the wineglasses of the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal size, there was no risk, so the weary is at rest for a time.

and

"At early morn, a triumphant cry of Eu

6

reka!' calls me to his place of rest. With his unfailing instinct he has got at the books, and lugged a considerable heap of them around him. That one which specially claims his attention my best-bound quarto -is spread upon a piece of bedroom-furniture readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him pore over it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with only one article of attire to separate him from the condition in which Archimedes, according to the popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry. He had discovered a very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories of a very important period. As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face from the book with an almost painful expression of grave eagerness, it occurred to me that I had seen something like the scene in Dutch paintings of the Temptation of St. Anthony.

"Suppose the scene changed to a pleasant country-house, where the enlivening talk has made a guest forget

'The lang Scots miles,

The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,'

that lie between him and his place of rest.