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I returned home not disappointed, for I have said that I had long

considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated;

but I returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these

studies in any shape. M. Krempe was a little squat man with a

gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore,

did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits. In rather a too

philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, I have given an

account of the conclusions I had come to concerning them in my

early years. As a child I had not been content with the results

promised by the modern professors of natural science. With a

confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my extreme youth

and my want of a guide on such matters, I had retrod the steps of

knowledge along the paths of time and exchanged the discoveries

of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists.

Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural

philosophy.