A REFLECTION NEW AND STRANGE.--THE STREETS OF LONDON.--A GREAT
MAN'S LIBRARY.--A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE STUDENT AND AN
ACQUAINTANCE OF THE READER'S.--ITS RESULT.

Rollo. Ask for thyself.
Lat. What more can concern me than this?
--The Tragedy of Rollo.

It was an evening in the declining autumn of 1758; some public ceremony
had occurred during the day, and the crowd, which it had assembled was
only now gradually lessening, as the shadows darkened along the streets.
Through this crowd, self-absorbed as usual--with them--not one of them--
Eugene Aram slowly wound his uncompanioned way. What an incalculable
field of dread and sombre contemplation is opened to every man who, with
his heart disengaged from himself, and his eyes accustomed to the sharp
observance of his tribe, walks through the streets of a great city! What
a world of dark and troublous secrets in the breast of every one who
hurries by you! Goethe has said somewhere, that each of us, the best as
the worst, hides within him something--some feeling, some remembrance
that, if known, would make you hate him. No doubt the saying is
exaggerated; but still, what a gloomy and profound sublimity in the
idea!--what a new insight it gives into the hearts of the common herd!--
with what a strange interest it may inspire us for the humblest, the
tritest passenger that shoulders us in the great thoroughfare of life!
One of the greatest pleasures in the world is to walk alone, and at
night, (while they are yet crowded,) through the long lamplit streets of
this huge metropolis. There, even more than in the silence of woods and
fields, seems to me the source of endless, various meditation.