Barely middle-aged; or, at a second glance, he might be fifteen to twenty-five years older.  His face retains the form of youth, yet wears a subtile shadow which we feel might be consistent even with extreme old age.  The forehead is wide and low, supported by regular eyebrows; the face beneath long and narrow, of a dark and dry complexion.  In sleep, open-mouthed, the expression is rather inane; though we can readily imagine the waking face to be not devoid of a certain intensity and comeliness of aspect, marred, however, by an air of guarded anxiety which is apparent even now.

We prattle of the dead past, and use to fancy that peace must dwell there, if nothing else.  Only in the past, say we, is security from jostle, danger, and disturbance; who would live at his ease must number his days backwards; no charm so potent as the years, if read from right to left.  Living in the past, prophecy and memory are at one; care for the future can harass no man.  Throw overboard that Jonah, Time, and the winds of fortune shall cease to buffet us.  And more to the same effect.

And yet it is not so.  The past, if more real than the future, is no less so than the present; the pain of a broken heart or head is never annihilated, but becomes part and parcel of eternity.  This uneasy snorer here, for instance:  his earthly troubles have been over years ago, yet, as our fancy sees him, he is none the calmer or the happier for that.  Observe him, how he mumbles inarticulately, and makes strengthless clutchings at the blanket with his long, slender fingers.

But we delay too long over the external man, seeing that our avowed business is with the internal.  A sleeping man is truly a helpless creature.  They say that, if you take his hand in yours and ask him questions, he has no other choice than to answer—­or to awake.  The Doctor—­as we know by virtue of the prophetic advantages just remarked upon—­will stay asleep for some hours yet.  Or, if you are clairvoyant, you have but to fall in a trance, and lay a hand on his forehead, and you may read off his thoughts,—­provided he does his thinking in his head.  But the world is growing too wise, nowadays, to put faith in old woman’s nonsense like this.  Again, there is—­or used to be—­an odd theory that all matter is a sort of photographic plate, whereon is registered, had we but eyes to read it, the complete history of itself.  What an invaluable pair of eyes were that!  In vain, arraigned before them, would the criminal deny his guilt, the lover the soft impeachment.  The whole scene would stand forth, photographed in fatal minuteness and indelibility upon face, hands, coat-sleeve, shirt-bosom.  Mankind would be its own book of life, written in the primal hieroglyphic character,—­the language understood by all.  Vocal conversation would become obsolete, unless among a few superior persons able to discuss abstract ideas.