190 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



whiskers and imperturbable shirt-front, I caught myself 

 speculating as to what sort of figure he would make in 

 the vivarium — not always to his glorification. In a 

 word, it was painfully evident that London wearied me, 

 and that I was troubled in my mind. I had tasted of 

 a new delight ; and the hungiy soul of man leaps on a 

 new passion to master, or be mastered by it. 



" Chacun veut en sagesse eriger sa folie" 



says Boileau, and I was willing enough to demonstrate 

 to all recusants that my passion had a most rational 

 basis. Meanwhile it was the torment of intellectual 

 hunger ; and I make it a rule always to satisfy hunger 

 — on philosophical principles. If you don't content it, 

 it will torment you ; it obtrudes on work and duty, 

 perplexing the one, and obstructing the other : it 

 can't be. starved into silence. When pastry-cooks hire 

 new boys, they wisely permit . an unrestricted glut of 

 tarts. The young gluttons fall on, tooth and nail, and 

 in a week are surfeited ; whereas a stealthy and re- 

 stricted aj)petite would have lasted them for years, 

 much to the damage of the pastry-cook. In this j^hilo- 

 sophic forethought I resolved to give myself a glut of 

 zoology, to let loose the reins of desire, and afterwards, 

 if the fates so willed it, settle once more into a student 

 of books, and writer thereof It was really time. For 

 seven long months I had been separated from the 

 coast ; and like the Cyclops of Euripides, I had grown 

 weary of feeding on daily butcher's meat and game, just 

 like other stray mortals in the Strand ; and smacked 



