beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a
surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model,
but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a
finely-moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a
want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and
tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the
regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not
easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the
prevailing character of these features, and of the expression
they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to
whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now
miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even
awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all
unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather
than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect
its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
incoherence--an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise
from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an
habitual trepidancy--an excessive nervous agitation. For
something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by
his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and
by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation
and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision
(when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to
that species of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty,
unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self-
balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be