and render him indistinctly conscious that an almost impassable gulf
divides his hired apartment from his former home. "It is but in the
next street," he sometimes says. Fool! it is in another world.
Hitherto he has put off' his return from one particular day to
another; henceforward he leaves the precise time undetermined--not
to-morrow; probably next week; pretty soon. Poor man! The dead have
nearly as much chance of revisiting their earthly homes as the
self-banished Wakefield.

Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen
pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays
its strong hand on every deed which we do and weaves its consequences
into an iron tissue of necessity.

Wakefield is spellbound. We must leave him for ten years or so to
haunt around his house without once crossing the threshold, and to be
faithful to his wife with all the affection of which his heart is
capable, while he is slowly fading out of hers. Long since, it must be
remarked, he has lost the perception of singularity in his conduct.

Now for a scene. Amid the throng of a London street we distinguish a
man, now waxing elderly, with few characteristics to attract careless
observers, yet bearing in his whole aspect the handwriting of no
common fate for such as have the skill to read it. He is meagre; his
low and narrow forehead is deeply wrinkled; his eyes, small and
lustreless, sometimes wander apprehensively about him, but oftener
seem to look inward. He bends his head and moves with an indescribable
obliquity of gait, as if unwilling to display his full front to the
world. Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you
will allow that circumstances--which often produce remarkable men from