"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!" CHAPTER IV. 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. Every one knows the magnificent moral of Goethe's "Faust!" Every one knows that sublime discontent--that chafing at the bounds of human knowledge--that yearning for the intellectual Paradise beyond, which "the sworded angel" forbids us to approach--that daring, yet sorrowful state of mind--that sense of defeat, even in conquest, which Goethe has embodied,--a picture of the loftiest grief of which the soul is capable, and which may remind us of the profound and august melancholy which the Great Sculptor breathed into the repose of the noblest of mythological heroes, when he represented the God resting after his labours, as if more convinced of their vanity than elated with their extent!