This hope and trust were far dearer to him, than any thing that earth could offer.
Sometimes, while thus at work, he was visited by learned men, who desired to know what literary undertaking Mr.Elliot had in hand.

They, like himself, had been bred in the studious cloisters of a university, and were supposed to possess all the erudition which mankind has hoarded up from age to age.

Greek and Latin were as familiar to them as the babble of their childhood.

Hebrew was like their mother tongue.

They had grown gray in study; their eyes were bleared with poring over print and manuscript by the light of the midnight lamp.
And yet, how much had they left unlearned! Mr.Eliot would put into their hands some of the pages, which he had been writing; and behold! the gray-headed men stammered over the long, strange words, like a little child in his first attempts to read.