being literally in want.  He never spoke to any one, but he had a very gentle look about the eyes, and those who had happened to be brought into contact with him spoke in very eulogistic terms of his amiability and good sense.  I never knew his name, and I do not believe that any one else did.  He did not belong to our part of the country, and he had no relations.  He was allowed to go his own way, and his singular mode of life excited no other feeling than one of surprise; but it had not always been so.  He had passed through many vicissitudes.  At one time he had been in communication with the people of the place and had imparted some of his ideas to them; but no one understood what he meant.  The word system which he used several times tickled their fancy, and this nickname was at once applied to him.  If he had gone on imparting his ideas he would have got himself into trouble, and the children would have pelted him.  Like a wise man he kept his tongue between his teeth, and no one attempted to molest him.  He came out every day to make his modest purchases, and of an evening he would take a walk in some unfrequented spot.  He was of a serious but not melancholy cast of countenance, and with more of an amiable than morose expression.  Later in life when I read Colerus’s Life of Spinoza, I at once saw that as a child I had had before my eyes the very image of the holy man of Amsterdam.  He was left to follow his own courses, and was even treated with respect.  His resigned and affable airs seemed like a glimpse from another world.  People did not understand him, but they felt that he possessed higher qualities to which they paid implicit homage.

He never went to church, and avoided any occasion of having to make external display of religious belief.  The clergy were very unfavourable to him and though they did not denounce him from the pulpit, as he had never given any cause for scandal, his name was always mentioned with repugnance.  A peculiar incident occurred to fan this animosity into a flame, and to involve the aged recluse in an atmosphere of ghostly terror.  He possessed a very large library, consisting of works belonging to the eighteenth century.  All those philosophical treatises which have exercised a wider influence than Luther and Calvin were to be found in it, and the old bookworm knew them by heart, and eked out a living by lending them to some of his neighbours.  The clergy looked upon this as the abomination of desolation, and strictly forbade their flocks to borrow these books.  System’s lodging was looked upon as a receptacle for every kind of impiety.