VII.] THE GERMAN GNAT CATCHER. 65 



On returning home we found dinner waiting for us. I 

 had invited the clergyman, and a German gentleman who 

 was lodging with him, to give us the pleasure of their com- 

 pany; and in ten minutes we had air become the best of 

 friends. It is true the conversation was carried on in rather 

 a wild jargon, made up of six different languages — Icelandic, 

 English, German, Latin, Danish, French — but in spite of the 

 difficulty with which he expressed himself, it was impossible 

 not to be struck with the simple earnest character of my 

 German convive. He was about five-and-twenty, a " doctor 

 philosophies" and had come to Iceland to catch gnats. After 

 having caught gnats in Iceland, he intended, he said, to 

 spend some years in catching gnats in Spain — the privacy ot 

 Spanish gnats, as it appears, not having been hitherto in- 

 vaded. The truth is, my guest was an entomologist, and in 

 the pursuit of the objects of his study was evidently pre- 

 pared to approach hardships and danger with a serenity 

 i.-.at would not have been unworthy of the apostle of a new 

 religion. It was almost touching to hear him describe the 

 intensity of his joy when perhaps days and nights of fruitless 

 labours were at last rewarded by the discovery of some 

 hitherto unknown little fly ; and it was with my whole heart 

 that, at parting, I wished him success in his career, and the 

 fame that so much conscientious labour merited. From my 

 allusion to this last reward, however, he seemed almost to 

 shrink, and, with a sincerity it was impossible to doubt, dis- 

 claimed as ignoble so poor a motive as a thirst for fame. 

 His was one of those calm laborious minds, seldom found 

 but among the Teutonic race, that — pursuing day by day 

 with single-minded energy some special object — live in a 

 noble obscurity, and die at last content with the conscious- 

 ness of having added one other stone to that tower of know- 

 ledge men are building up toward heaven, even though the 

 world should never learn what strong and patient hands 

 have placed it there. 



The next morning we started for the Geysirs : this time 

 dividing the baggage-train, and sending on the cook in light 



5 



