Wonderful is it, that while the whole soul of Vivian Grey seemed concentrated and wrapped in the glorious pages of the Athenian,—while, with keen and almost inspired curiosity, he searched, and followed up, and meditated upon, the definite mystery, the indefinite developement,—while his spirit alternately bowed in trembling and in admiration, as he seemed to be listening to the secrets of the Universe revealed in the glorious melodies of an immortal voice;—wonderful is it, I say, that the writer, the study of whose works appeared to the young scholar, in the revelling of his enthusiasm, to be the sole object for which man was born and had his being, was the cause by which Vivian Grey was saved from being all his life a dreaming scholar.
Determined to spare no exertions, and to neglect no means, by which he might enter into the very penetralia of his mighty master's meaning, Vivian determined to attack the latter Platon-
