please his hostess and distract his own solitary thoughts, he had
condescended (just before Leonard found him out) to peruse the memorials
of a life obscure to the world, and new to his own experience of coarse
joys and woes. "I have been making a romance, to amuse myself, from
their contents," said he. "They maybe of use to you, brother author.
I have told Mrs. Goodyer to place them in your room. Amongst those
papers is a sort of journal,--a woman's journal; it moved me greatly. A
man gets into another world, strange to him as the orb of Sirius, if he
can transport himself into the centre of a woman's heart, and see the
life there, so wholly unlike our own. Things of moment to us, to it so
trivial; things trifling to us, to it so vast. There was this journal,
in its dates reminding me of stormy events in my own existence, and grand
doings in the world's. And those dates there, chronicling but the
mysterious, unrevealed record of some obscure, loving heart! And in that
chronicle, O Sir Poet, there was as much genius, vigour of thought,
vitality of being, poured and wasted, as ever kind friend will say was
lavished on the rude outer world by big John Burley! Genius, genius!
are we all alike, then, save when we leash ourselves to some matter-of-
fact material, and float over the roaring seas on a wooden plank or a
herring tub?" And after he had uttered that cry of a secret anguish,
John Burley had begun to show symptoms of growing fever and disturbed
brain; and when they had got him into bed, he lay there muttering to
himself, until, towards midnight, he had asked Leonard to bring the light
nearer to him.

So now he again was quiet, with his face turned towards the wall; and
Leonard stood by the bedside sorrowfully, and Mrs. Goodyer, who did not
heed Burley's talk, and thought only of his physical state, was dipping
cloths into iced water to apply to his forehead. But as she approached
with these, and addressed him soothingly, Burley raised himself on his