cavities; and spreading his handkerchief on the grass, and placing the skull in its centre, he gathered the four corners over it; and, reiterating his thanks to the amused sexton, he set off with an accelerated pace to his little museum. His first step was to convey his new property to the pump, under the action of which he kept it exercised until he had cleansed it from every particle of earth or soilment; and wiping it dry with the utmost care, he triumphantly deposited it upon his shelf above the skull of the calf; assigning to it the first place in his little series of crania.

The friendship thus commenced with the sexton, was not suffered by Ernst to die away; he repaired to him, whenever he saw him busied in his functions; and asked him so many questions of an unusual and intelligent nature, as to induce the sexton to offer to shew him the charnel or bone-house, in which detached bones thrown up in grave-digging were

commonly deposited. The offer was accepted with rapture; and the joy experienced by Ernst when that world of wonders was first disclosed to his sight, can only be compared with that of Columbus, when he first beheld the shores of America in his view, and already within his reach. He flew at every skull in succession; turned them over and over; thrust in his fingers to feel their interior; compared several of them together; and so astonished and interested the sexton, that he permitted him to purloin two, the one that of a boy of his own age, the other that of a young child: to the other bones, he paid little or no attention.

CHAPTER III.

HIS PUBERTY, ADOLESCENCE, AND

MANHOOD.

He had now an important accession to his collection; and his affection for his closet daily increased as his ideas became better arranged and better combined. In this beloved retreat, which commanded, from its eminence, a wide extent of forest scenery permeated by the course of the Oder, many and many an hour was rapturously passed; and many observations were made, of which he then but little knew the importance, but which formed and established an habit of discernment wholly unattainable by any who commence their researches in encephalology at á later period of life, and under circumstances less extraordinary and less propitious.

It has been unnecessary to interrupt the narrative, by pointing out to the reader the particular affection that subsisted between Ernst and his maternal grandfather. The faculty, in which Baron Haupt had raised himself to such distinction, naturally caused him to contemplate his little grandson with enthusiastic fondness; and the interest which he always took in his pursuits, and the information which he was able to impart to him, made Ernst look forwards to his occasional visits, at Hirnschädel, as the consummation of his happiness.

But these happy days were now to be interrupted. The age that Ernst had attained, rendered it necessary that he should begin to experience the restraints of a school education. He had learned reading and writing from his careful mother, and had been initiated into the first rudiments of Latin by the respected pastor of his village; he was now, for the first time, to be separated from his

parents, his brothers and sisters, his home, and his dearly beloved museum. His feelings were tender and affectionate. Though making every manly effort to suppress those feelings, a starting tear would betray the insincerity of the smile which he forced upon his countenance in the presence of the rational objects of his attachment; but, when he took his last leave, alone, of his little closet; his intimacy with which had been coeval with the earliest records of his memory, and in the seclusion of which he had passed so many hours of the purest and most exquisite mental enjoyment that his early age could taste; there was something in the aspect of his favourite objects arranged silently before him, and as it were, mutely taking their leave of him, that overpowered his feelings, and he burst into tears. He had permission to lock the door himself, and to carry away the key with him; and he received an assurance that the closet should