there were unaccustomed thoughts in his bosom now; and to these, leaning
his head on one of the unopened volumes, he resigned himself.

He called up in review the years, that, even at his early age, he had
spent in solitary study, in conversation with the dead, while he had
scorned to mingle with the living world, or to be actuated by any of its
motives. He asked himself to what purpose was all this destructive labor,
and where was the happiness of superior knowledge. He had climbed but a
few steps of a ladder that reached to infinity: he had thrown away his
life in discovering, that, after a thousand such lives, he should still
know comparatively nothing. He even looked forward with dread--though once
the thought had been dear to him--to the eternity of improvement that lay
before him. It seemed now a weary way, without a resting-place and without
a termination; and at that moment he would have preferred the dreamless
sleep of the brutes that perish to man's proudest attribute,--of
immortality.

Fanshawe had hitherto deemed himself unconnected with the world,
Unconcerned in its feelings, and uninfluenced by it in any of his
pursuits. In this respect he probably deceived himself. If his inmost
heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that
dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a
thousand realities. But, at any rate, he had seemed, to others and to
himself, a solitary being, upon whom the hopes and fears of ordinary men
were ineffectual.

But now he felt the first thrilling of one of the many ties, that, so long
as we breathe the common air, (and who shall say how much longer?) unite
us to our kind. The sound of a soft, sweet voice, the glance of a gentle
eye, had wrought a change upon him; and in his ardent mind a few hours had