Transcriber's Notes:
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(Harvard University)
It may be very well in most cases to plunge, according to the rule ofthe Latin poet, into the middle of things. It may be very well even,according to the recommendation of Count Antoine Hamilton, to 'beginwith the beginning.' But there are other cases where there may beantecedents to the actual story, which require to be known before thetale itself is rightly comprehended. With this view, then, I will giveone short scene not strictly attached to that which is to follow, ereI proceed with my history.
In a small high room of the oldest part of St. John's College,Cambridge, in a warm and glowing day of the early spring, and at aboutseven o'clock in the morning, there sat a young man with his cheekleaning on his hand, and his eyes fixed upon the page of an open book.There were many others closed and unclosed upon the table around him,as well as various pieces of paper, traced with every sort of curiousfigure which geometrical science ever discovered or measured. Thepage, too, on which his eyes were bent, was well nigh as full ofciphers as of words, and it was evident, from everything around, thatthe studies of the tenant of that chamber were of a very abstrusecharacter.
And yet to gaze at him as he sits there, and to consider attentivelythe lines of the face, and the development of the organs of the head,the physiognomist or phrenologist would, at once pronounce that,although by no means wanting in any of the powers of mind, that youngman was by nature disposed to seek the pleasures of imagination ratherthan the dry and less exciting, though more satisfactory, results ofscience. There were some slight indications, too, about his room, ofsuch tastes and propensities. In a wine-glass, half filled with water,were some early flowers, so arranged that every hue gained additionalbeauty from that with which it was contrasted; a flute and some musiclay upon a distant table; one window, which looked towards thegardens, and through which came the song of birds and the fragrantbreath of the fresh fields, was thrown wide open; while another, whichlooked towards courts and buildings, was closed, and had the curtainsdrawn. Nevertheless, had any eye watched him since he rose, it wouldhave found that from the hour of five he had remained intent upon theproblems before him, suffering not a thought to wander, neither risingfrom the table, nor turning his eyes even for a moment to theworshipped beauty of external nature. The air came in gently fromwithout, and fanned his cheek, and waved the curls of his dark hair;the smell of the flowers was wafted to the sense; the song of the birdsounded melodious in his ear; but not the breeze, nor the odour, northe lay called off his attention from the dry and heavy task beforehim. His cheek was pale with thought, his fine eyes looked oppressedwith study, though still bright; and the broad expansive brow achedwith the weary labours of many a day and night: labours to which he