238 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. V. 



as a chance occurrence has turned my thoughts to that long- 

 forgotten panorama. Whither has that marching host wended ? 

 One may ask in answer, whither Alexander aiid his Greeks are 

 gone; Xenophon and his 10,000 ; Xerxes, or Csesar, or Charle- 

 magne whither? All gone back to nothingness and night, 

 mouldered into dust, ay, and made up again, mayhap, and that 

 over and over again, into men and women. So has your great 

 army vanished, and of its existence seemingly no vestige now 

 remains. So thought I, so I daresay did you ; and yet, strange, 

 strange to say, one solitary waif has survived the destruction of 

 his brethren, a single pilgrim, untouched by time, but dumb as 

 to the fate of his fellows ! You will see some meaning in my 

 raving when I tell you, that last night I found lying on my 

 table (arrived there I know not how) one of the figures that 

 once filled a place in the procession. There he lay, right before 

 my amazed eyes, a Turco-Persian, by the look of him, a jagged 

 crown upon his head, and in his clenched fist a long sabre, suit- 

 ing well with the swashing look of the fellow. I cannot think 

 how he got to my table ; perhaps he fell out of the leaves of a 

 book, where he had been imprisoned, like Ariel in the cleft pine, 

 for some ages. I do not know, but so soon as I recognised him 

 I caught him, and stowed him away carefully in a sly drawer of 

 the curiously-devised desk I inherited from you. There he is, 

 very precious as a memorial of you, and of old, old days, when 

 we and others were young. There he shall lie near your astro- 

 nomical devices, which I consider my property, and shall keep 

 till you are married. I shall then make a present of them to 

 your lady, as an heirloom of the family, and an evidence of the 

 superior powers of the boys of the olden time. 



" There have I cheated you out of much clean, serviceable 

 paper, by getting involved and hurried along further than I in- 

 tended, among that processional throng. Extricating myself at 

 last, I have to tell you of home affairs. ... I lately sent copies 

 of my essay to Paris by a friend, with letters to three of the 

 chief French chemists. I assure you it is far easier to write in 

 English than in French. John Niven was out of town, and 

 Harry Giles in London, so that I had nothing for it but to fall 

 to myself. I made one letter serve them all as a staple docu- 



