He left town, therefore, about the middle of May and started across the Channel, resolving to make for Switzerland by the leisurely and delightful way of the Rhine, in order to visit Bonn, the scene of his old student days.  What days they had been!—­days of dreaming, more than action, for he had always regarded learning as a pastime rather than a drudgery, and so had easily distanced his comrades in the race for knowledge.  While they were flirting with the Lischen or Gretchen of the hour, he had willingly absorbed himself in study—­thus he had attained the head of his classes with scarce an effort, and, in fact, had often found time hanging heavily on his hands for want of something more to do.  He had astonished the university professors—­but he had not astonished himself, inasmuch as no special branch of learning presented any difficulties to him, and the more he mastered the more dissatisfied he became.  It had seemed such a little thing to win the honors of scholarship! for at that time his ambition was always climbing up the apparently inaccessible heights of fame,—­ fame, that he then imagined was the greatest glory any human being could aspire to.  He smiled as he recollected this, and thought how changed he was since then!  What a difference between the former discontented mutability of his nature, and the deep, unswerving calm of patience that characterized it now!  Learning and scholarship? these were the mere child’s alphabet of things,—­and fame was a passing breath that ruffled for one brief moment the on-rushing flood of time—­a bubble blown in the air to break into nothingness.  Thus much wisdom he had acquired,—­and what more?  A great deal more! he had won the difficult comprehension of himself; he had grasped the priceless knowledge that man has no enemy save that which is within him, and that the pride of a rebellious Will is the parent Sin from which all others are generated.  The old Scriptural saying is true for all time, that through pride the angels fell; and it is only through humility that they will ever rise again.  Pride! the proud Will that is left free by Divine Law, to work for itself and answer for itself, and wreak upon its own head the punishment of its own errors,—­the Will that once voluntarily crushed down, in the dust at the Cross of Christ, with these words truly drawn from the depths of penitence, “Lord, not as I will, but as Thou wilt!” is straightway lifted up from its humiliation, a supreme, stately Force, resistless, miraculous, world-commanding;—­smoothing the way for all greatness and all goodness, and guiding the happy Soul from joy to joy, from glory to glory, till Heaven itself is reached and the perfection of all love and life begins.  For true humility is not slavish, as some people imagine, but rather royal, since, while acknowledging the supremacy of God, it claims close kindred with Him, and is at once invested with all the diviner virtues.  Fame and wealth,