generally accompanies research; refusing the ignorant homage of their
kind, making their sublime motive their only meed, adoring Wisdom for her
sole sake, and set apart in the populous universe, like stars, luminous
with their own light, but too remote from the earth on which they looked,
to shed over its inmates the lustre with which they glowed.

From his youth to the present period, Aram had dwelt little in cities
though he had visited many, yet he could scarcely be called ignorant of
mankind; there seems something intuitive in the science which teaches us
the knowledge of our race. Some men emerge from their seclusion, and
find, all at once, a power to dart into the minds and drag forth the
motives of those they see; it is a sort of second sight, born with them,
not acquired. And Aram, it may be, rendered yet more acute by his
profound and habitual investigations of our metaphysical frame, never
quitted his solitude to mix with others, without penetrating into the
broad traits or prevalent infirmities their characters possessed. In
this, indeed, he differed from the scholar tribe, and even in abstraction
was mechanically vigilant and observant. Much in his nature would, had
early circumstances given it a different bias, have fitted him for
worldly superiority and command. A resistless energy, an unbroken
perseverance, a profound and scheming and subtle thought, a genius
fertile in resources, a tongue clothed with eloquence, all, had his
ambition so chosen, might have given him the same empire over the
physical, that he had now attained over the intellectual world. It could
not be said that Aram wanted benevolence, but it was dashed, and mixed
with a certain scorn: the benevolence was the offspring of his nature;
the scorn seemed the result of his pursuits. He would feed the birds from
his window, he would tread aside to avoid the worm on his path; were one
of his own tribe in danger, he would save him at the hazard of his life:-
-yet in his heart he despised men, and believed them beyond amelioration.