walked the catacombs swinging his lanthorn. “I feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my breast; Legion is revived in me.” In these solitudes there were no guides and no companions. “I am in the dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud.” The strangest thoughts and imaginings have play with him as he goes about his work, outwardly the most sober of mankind and esteemed the greatest physician in Norwich. He has wished for death. He has doubted all things. What if we are asleep in this world and the conceits of life are as mere dreams? The tavern music, the Ave Mary bell, the broken pot that the workman has dug out of the field — at the sight and sound of them he stops dead, as if transfixed by the astonishing vista that opens before his imagination. “We carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us.” A halo of wonder encircles everything that he sees; he turns his light gradually upon the flowers and insects and grasses at his feet so as to disturb nothing in the mysterious processes of their existence. With the same awe, mixed with a sublime complacency, he records the discovery of his own qualities and attainments. He was charitable and brave and averse from nothing. He was full of feeling for others and merciless upon himself. “For my conversation, it is like the sun’s, with all men, and with a friendly aspect to good and bad.” He knows six languages, the laws, the customs and policies of several states, the names of all the constellations and most of the plants of his country,
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