away from me, and you take away the very winds which purify and give
motion to the obscure and silent current of my life. Besides, my Pelham,
it cannot have escaped your observation, that there is little in my
present state which promises a long increase of days: the few that remain
to me must glide away like their predecessors; and whatever be the
infirmities of my body, and the little harassments which, I am led to
suspect, do occasionally molest the most fortunate, who link themselves
unto the unstable and fluctuating part of creation, which we term women,
more especially in an hymeneal capacity--whatever these may be, I have my
refuge and my comforter in the golden-souled and dreaming Plato, and the
sententious wisdom of the less imaginative Seneca. Nor, when I am
reminded of my approaching dissolution by the symptoms which do mostly at
the midnight hour press themselves upon me, is there a small and
inglorious pleasure in the hope that I may meet hereafter, in those
islands of the blest which they dimly dreamt of, but which are opened
unto my vision, without a cloud, or mist, or shadow of uncertainty and
doubt, with those bright spirits which we do now converse with so
imperfectly; that I may catch from the very lips of Homer the unclouded
gorgeousness of fiction, and from the accents of Archimedes, the
unadulterated calculations of truth."

Clutterbuck ceased, and the glow of his enthusiasm diffused itself over
his sunken eye and consumptive cheek. The boy, who had sat apart, and
silent, during our discourse, laid his head upon the table, and sobbed
audibly; and I rose, deeply affected, to offer to one for whom they were,
indeed, unavailing, the wishes and blessing of an eager, but not hardened
disciple of the world. We parted: on this earth we can never meet again.
The light has wasted itself away beneath the bushel. It will be six weeks
to-morrow since the meek and noble-minded academician breathed his last.