the individual) within how narrow a circle! What blindness to
approaching catastrophes, in the midst of what nearness to the light!
And for myself, whom accident had made the silent observer of these
changes, was it not likely enough that I also was rushing forward to
court and woo some frantic mode of evading an endurance that by
patience might have been borne, or by thoughtfulness might have been
disarmed? Misgivingly I went forwards, feeling forever that, through
clouds of thick darkness, I was continually nearing a danger, or was
myself perhaps wilfully provoking a trial, before which my
constitutional despondency would cause me to lie down without a
struggle.


II.

THE PRIORY.



To teach is to learn: according to an old experience, it is the very
best mode of learning--the surest, and the shortest. And hence,
perhaps, it may be, that in the middle ages by the monkish word
_scholaris_ was meant indifferently he that learned and he that
taught. Never in any equal number of months had my understanding so
much expanded as during this visit to Laxton. The incessant demand made
upon me by Lady Carbery for solutions of the many difficulties
besetting the study of divinity and the Greek Testament, or for such
approximations to solutions as my resources would furnish, forced me
into a preternatural tension of all the faculties applicable to that
purpose. Lady Carbery insisted upon calling me her "Admirable