midnight
It was one of that interminable series of controversial volumes , containing the theological speculations of the ancient fathers of the Church . With the patient perseverance so characteristic of his countrymen , he was endeavoring to detect truth amidst the numberless inconsistencies of heated controversy ; to reconcile jarring propositions ; to search out the thread of scholastic argument amidst the rant of prejudice and the sallies of passion , and the coarse vituperations of a spirit of personal bitterness , but little in accordance with the awful gravity of the question at issue . Wearied and baffled in his researches , he at length closed the volume , and rested his care-worn forehead upon his hand . `` What avail , '' he said , `` these long and painful endeavors , these midnight vigils , these weary studies , before which heart and flesh are failing ? What have I gained ? I have pushed my researches wide and far ; my life has been one long and weary lesson ; I have shut out from me the busy and beautiful world ; I have chastened every youthful impulse ; and at an age when the heart should be lightest and the pulse the freest , I am grave and silent and sorrowful , ' and the frost of a premature age is gathering around my heart . Amidst these ponderous tomes , surrounded by the venerable receptacles of old wisdom , breathing , instead of the free air of heaven , the sepulchral dust of antiquity , I have become assimilated to the objects around me ; my very nature has undergone a metamorphosis of which Pythagoras never dreamed .