matters; but this was too much for him. He made substance of shadows, and then exhausted himself in giving them battle. He became anxious, uneasy, nervous,--showing very plainly, that, in his search after the Alkahest, he had injured his powers by making trial of too many drugs. Mac, with his sturdy good sense, and unerring mace-like judgment, speedily became aware of this waste of function to which Clarian was subjecting himself, and warned me accordingly. "Why do you let that boy bother his brains about your stupid _Ego_ and _Non-Ego_?" said he. "Don't you see he is injuring himself, beginning to sink under a sort of mental _albumenurea_,--at the very time, too, when he has most need of stamina? He does nothing but read, read, read,--and what, forsooth? Not anything that will teach him the genuineness of life and manhood, but those damnable spirit-exalting, body-despising emasculates of Alexandria,--Madame Guyon's meditations, too, and Isaac Taylor's giddy see-sawings,--all heresies, and bosh,--'Dead-Sea fruits that turn to ashes', and not only disgust you, but blister tongue and lips most vilely. You'll have him next trying to treat with the gods, to attain Brahm's purification, Boodh's annihilation, to jump over the moon, or doing something that will make him candidate for the shaved-head-and-blister treatment. Remember, Ned, his brain is made of finer stuff than that stolid sponge inside your _pia mater_, that can take in _quantum sufficit_ of beer, fog, and tobacco-smoke, unharmed. He can't stand it, and he's too rare and delicate a machine to go cranky thus soon. You've got the child under your thumb,--bring him out o' that. Make him take a dose of Verulam, get him back into the world again, and order him four hours _per diem_ at the dumb-bells." And so, the next time Clarian came to our rooms, and was eagerly soliciting my opinion of a little essay he had written, to establish the identity of the Logos with the Demiurgic Mind, ("Plato's World-Soul, called in 'Timæus' the best of Eternal Intelligences, the Noetic Partaker and Digester of Reason", said Clarian in his tract,) with some corollaries for the purpose of reconciling _Geist_ and _Freiheit_, all sauced down, _à l'Allemagne_, with numerous capitals and a proper degree of incomprehensibility,--Mac bluffly interrupted the colloquy, and accosted Clarian,-- "Younker! do you know you're a fool?" Clarian colored up,-- "How, Mac?" "What are we--Ned, and you, and I--here for?" "To acquire knowledge." "Ay, knowledge,--but what for?" "To fit us for heaven." "Phew! then you calculate to graduate from 'these classic shades' direct into celestial regions, do you, without sojourning awhile in this terrene purgatory? I do not, and, moreover, _je n'en ai pas l'envie_; I think the world has some claims upon me, and I mean to pay that debt, D. V." "So do I, Mac," rejoined Clarian, a little proudly.