"Bring the light nearer," said John Burley,--"nearer still."

Leonard obeyed, and placed the candle on a little table by the sick man's
bedside.

Burley's mind was partially wandering; but there was method in his
madness. Horace Walpole said that "his stomach would survive all the
rest of him." That which in Burley survived the last was his quaint,
wild genius. He looked wistfully at the still flame of the candle: "It
lives ever in the air!" said he.

"What lives ever?"

Burley's voice swelled, "Light!" He turned from Leonard, and again
contemplated the little flame. "In the fixed star, in the Will-o'-the-
wisp, in the great sun that illumines half a world, or the farthing
rushlight by which the ragged student strains his eyes,--still the same
flower of the elements! Light in the universe, thought in the soul--Ay,
ay, go on with the simile. My head swims. Extinguish the light! You
cannot; fool, it vanishes from your eye, but it is still in the space.
Worlds must perish, suns shrivel up, matter and spirit both fall into
nothingness, before the combinations whose union makes that little flame
which the breath of a babe can restore to darkness, shall lose the power
to form themselves into light once more. Lose the power!---no, the
necessity: it is the one Must in creation. Ay, ay, very dark riddles
grow clear now,--now when I could not cast up an addition sum in the
baker's bill! What wise man denied that two and two made four? Do they
not make four? I can't answer him. But I could answer a question that
some wise men have contrived to make much knottier." He smiled softly,