"From this spirit of detachment in the philosopher is bred a corresponding spirit of aloofness in the multitude. They see the towers of Bel, black against the evening sky, and the watcher to them is but a man enamoured of the silence, smitten with madness by the stars; a man whose life is in the future, whose wisdom is but a sure foreknowledge of death and fate, whose very presence among them is a prophecy of corruption and change; and they ask, well may they ask! what is his wisdom worth to us? The days are blue and gold, blue and silver are the nights; and the birds are clamorous among the dripping boughs; why should we pause to think of fate? What does his wisdom profit him when in a little time he dies, and is equal with us in the dust? The flowers bud, blossom, and seed, without thought for the departing year; the birds go delightfully upon the ways of the wind, though the arrows which shall bring them to earth are stored in the quiver. Shall we do otherwise? "Truly the worshipper of wisdom is a lonely man. The results which he obtains are never the possession of the many. They may excite the curiosity of the few, they may become an affectation with the amateur, but they do not touch the multitude, for to this last that only is good which is good in its immediate effect. Miserable indeed, the race of man seemed to me, O King; content that their mortal ambition should be bounded by the limits of a day; seeking only fat pastures and pleasant waters; and careless of the lot of their progeny, whose fate it is to cover the whole earth with populous cities, and stream like a river of fire, impetuous and consuming, into hidden and desolate places, which only the eyes of the gods have seen as yet. The treasure of wisdom is a treasure which is continually being lost, rediscovered, and lost again. It is like the gold of the miser, hidden in the ground; his son does not inherit it, but after many years some labourer turns it up with his deep-driven ploughshare, and the coins ring against the stones, and lie with tarnished brightness on the loose earth of the furrow. "A confused murmuring distracted my thought. I seemed to swim back to reality out of a world of dreams. At first I thought that I had approached a hive of wild bees; but the humming murmuring noise seemed sweeter, more bird-like, until I saw that it came indeed from a parliament of birds, which had congregated in the boughs of an apple-tree, warbling there, and rising every now and then into the air, with a great rushing of wings, to wheel above the tree and descend upon it again in a thick cloud. I had strayed into a pleasant valley, where the Euphrates flows between level meadows of wild wheat, enclosed, like an amphitheatre, by well-wooded hills, which had already taken on the tawny and golden tints of autumn.