seen that he had nearly as much as his master, whom he evidently hated and despised, and whom he seemed to fear but little. He was a younger man by far than many thousands whom I had seen and heard of in that city, and yet he appeared to be placed, in medical authority at least, above them all. To attain such a position he must have been endowed with the abilities of Æsculapius, Æetius, Galen, and their multitudinous successors. In addition to the constant pursuit of his studies and duties he had found time, in less than two hundred years, to construct, out of nothing that I could see or account for, a hall or grotto of vast proportions and astonishing magnificence, in which he produced effigies of his parents, and of his beautiful Helen and her companions, in the most marvellous similitude to the reality of life. In this I could only compare him to the author of the 'Arabian Knights,' or our own Sir Walter Scott. And yet, with all his strength and power, his character presented many eccentricities, if not absolute weaknesses. He could rebuke me severely for my deficiencies in wisdom, and yet fall down himself and worship the work of his own hands the image of Helen, the ever lovely and mysterious Helen. He could roll on the floor and cry like a child when her name was mentioned; and become mad with jealousy and rage at one moment because I had kissed her in a dream; and, lo! in the next, he would be shouting with wild laughter at the antics of a troop of musical buffoons. He could take me in the morning to witness a solemn tragedy, and in the evening dissipate the same in a cloud of smoke and with ringing laughter. He would argue the gravest matters with Artabanzanus himself, and then go out and crack jokes with the hoggish Obeltub, the driving fiend of the lightning balloon.
My reverie was suddenly interrupted by the subject of it rushing into the room, with much apparent excitement, a
