who died soon after Herbert entered college, had given much uneasiness to the wealthy and respectable city-circle with which he was socially connected.  Upon the death of his wife he had retired to the Vannelle homestead in the northwestern part of Connecticut, and there lived in studious seclusion.  There he insisted upon bringing up his only son, deprived of such recreations and companionships as are suitable to youth.  He had, indeed, superintended his studies with patience and thoroughness, and had not failed to accomplish him in the grace of physical power, at that time little recognized as a part of education.

So much was known of Vannelle when he appeared at college among the young men of the Junior Class.  And little more was known of him when he left America on the day his class graduated.  His connections with the other students had been very slight.  He had never cared to acquire that fluency in retailing the thoughts of others upon which college-rank depends.  An access to the library was all that he seemed to value in his connection with the institution.  And here he busied himself, not with the openings to the solid and rational sciences, but with the bewildering sophistries of the school-philosophies, and their aimless wrangling over verbal conceits.

At that time I happened to be taking a young man’s first enchanting rounds upon the tread-mill of metaphysics.  At the library I often encountered Vannelle in search of some volume of which I had just possessed myself.  This led to an acquaintance.  I was soon fascinated by a power which streamed from his large, expressive eyes, and persuaded by a voice modulated in a pathos and sweetness that I have heard in no other person.  His influence upon me at this time was not unlike that which the mesmerists had just begun to exercise.  Yet, while he showed an interest in directing my inquiries along the paths to which they naturally tended, he never communicated the results of his own studies, or offered me the slightest assistance in generalizing my random observations.  What he thought himself, or by what writers he was influenced, it was not easy to fathom.  He was deeply acquainted with the writings of the New-England Transcendentalists, then at their greatest notoriety, yet never for an instant seemed giddy upon the hazy heights where those earnest spirits soared.

Vannelle spent two years in Germany, and returned to America about the time that my college-course was finished.  The little I knew of him during his absence was from the scattered notices of newspaper-correspondents, who intimated that Herbert possessed the privilege of friendly intercourse with men most distinguished for knowledge in the Old World.  Just before Class-Day, I received a letter dated from X——­, in Connecticut, inviting me, in terms which seemed almost a command, to spend the summer at the Vannelle homestead.  Herbert had returned, and thus abruptly summoned me.  Intending to postpone until the autumn the study of a profession, I promised to come to him for a few weeks,—­a visit which might be extended, were it mutually agreeable.