"Why, here."

"And the midriff?"

"Here, certes."

"Right!--thou mayest go now," said the friar, dryly. Adam disappeared
through the aperture, and closed the panel.

"Now I know where the lungs, midriff, and liver are," said the friar
to himself, "I shall get on famously. 'T is a useful fellow, that, or
I should have had him hanged long ago!"

Adam did not remark on his re-entrance that his visitor, Hilyard, had
disappeared, and the philosopher was soon reimmersed in the fiery
interest of his thankless labours.

It might be an hour afterwards, when, wearied and exhausted by
perpetual hope and perpetual disappointment, he flung himself on his
seat; and that deep sadness, which they who devote themselves in this
noisy world to wisdom and to truth alone can know, suffused his
thoughts, and murmured from his feverish lips.

"Oh, hard condition of my life!" groaned the sage,--"ever to strive,
and never to accomplish. The sun sets and the sun rises upon my
eternal toils, and my age stands as distant from the goal as stood my
youth! Fast, fast the mind is wearing out the frame, and my schemes
have but woven the ropes of sand, and my name shall be writ in water.
Golden dreams of my young hope, where are ye? Methought once, that