“You think then,” said the Earl, reluctantly diverting the conversation into a new channel “that in the pursuit of knowledge lies our only active road to real happiness. Yet here how eternal must be the disappointments even of the most successful! Does not Boyle tell us of a man who, after devoting his whole life to the study of one mineral, confessed himself, at last, ignorant of all its properties?”
“Had the object of his study been himself, and not the mineral, he would not have been so unsuccessful a student,” said Aram, smiling. “Yet,” added he, in a graver tone, “we do indeed cleave the vast heaven of Truth with a weak and crippled wing: and often we are appalled in our way by a dread sense of the immensity around us, and of the inadequacy of our own strength. But there is a rapture in the breath of the pure and difficult air, and in the progress by which we compass earth, the while we draw nearer to the stars,--that again exalts us beyond ourselves, and reconciles the true student unto all things,--even to the hardest of them all,--the conviction how feebly our performance can ever imitate the grandeur of our ambition! As you see the spark fly upward,--sometimes not falling to earth till it be dark and quenched,--thus soars, whither it recks not, so that the direction be above, the luminous spirit of him who aspires to Truth; nor will it back to the vile and heavy clay from which it sprang, until the light which bore it upward be no more!”
A DEEPER EXAMINATION INTO THE STUDENT’S HEART.--THE VISIT TO THE CASTLE.--PHILOSOPHY PUT TO THE TRIAL.
I weigh not fortune’s frown or smile, I joy not much in earthly joys, I seek not state, I seek not stile, I am not fond of fancy’s toys; I rest so pleased with what I have, I wish no more, no more I crave. --Joshua Sylvester.
The reader must pardon me, if I somewhat clog his interest in my tale by the brief conversations I have given, and must for a short while cast myself on his indulgence and renew. It is not only the history of his life, but the character and tone of Aram’s mind, that I wish to stamp upon my page. Fortunately, however, the path my story assumes is of such a nature, that in order to effect this object, I shall never have to desert, and scarcely again even to linger by, the way.