accordance with the awful gravity of the question at issue.

Wearied and baffled in his researches, he at length closed the volume,
and rested his care-worn forehead upon his hand. "What avail," he said,
"these long and painful endeavors, these midnight vigils, these weary
studies, before which heart and flesh are failing? What have I gained?
I have pushed my researches wide and far; my life has been one long and
weary lesson; I have shut out from me the busy and beautiful world; I
have chastened every youthful impulse; and at an age when the heart
should be lightest and the pulse the freest, I am grave and silent and
sorrowful,' and the frost of a premature age is gathering around my
heart. Amidst these ponderous tomes, surrounded by the venerable
receptacles of old wisdom, breathing, instead of the free air of heaven,
the sepulchral dust of antiquity, I have become assimilated to the
objects around me; my very nature has undergone a metamorphosis of which
Pythagoras never dreamed. I am no longer a reasoning creature, looking
at everything within the circle of human investigation with a clear and
self-sustained vision, but the cheated follower of metaphysical
absurdities, a mere echo of scholastic subtilty. God knows that my aim
has been a lofty and pure one, that I have buried myself in this living
tomb, and counted the health of this His feeble and outward image as
nothing in comparison with that of the immortal and inward
representation and shadow of His own Infinite Mind; that I have toiled
through what the world calls wisdom, the lore of the old fathers and
time-honored philosophy, not for the dream of power and gratified
ambition, not for the alchemist's gold or life-giving elixir, but with
an eye single to that which I conceived to be the most fitting object of
a godlike spirit, the discovery of Truth,--truth perfect and unclouded,
truth in its severe and perfect beauty, truth as it sits in awe and
holiness in the presence of its Original and Source!