I went to him sometimes in the morning; Julie would
come at the same hours. It was a rare and touching spectacle to see
that old man seated in the midst of his books,--a monument of human
learning and philosophy, of which he had exhausted all the pages during
his long life,--discovering the mysteries of Nature and of thought to a
youth who stood beside him; while a woman, young and lovely as that
ideal philosophy, that loving wisdom,--the Beatrice of the poet of
Florence,--attended as his first disciple, and was the fellow-learner
of that younger brother. She brought the books, turned over the page,
and marked the chapters with her extended rosy finger; she moved amid
the spheres, the globes, the instruments, and the heaps of volumes, in
the dust of human knowledge; and seemed the soul of Nature disengaging
itself from matter, to kindle it and teach it to burn and love.
I learned and understood more in a few days than in years of dry and
solitary study; but the frequent infirmities of age in the master too
often interrupted these morning lessons.
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