Excerpt

In a small high room of the oldest part of St. John''s College, Cambridge, in a warm and glowing day of the early spring, and at about seven o''clock in the morning, there sat a young man with his cheek leaning on his hand, and his eyes fixed upon the page of an open book.

There were many others closed and unclosed upon the table around him, as well as various pieces of paper, traced with every sort of curious figure which geometrical science ever discovered or measured.

The page, too, on which his eyes were bent, was well nigh as full of ciphers as of words, and it was evident, from everything around, that the studies of the tenant of that chamber were of a very abstruse character.