But two years, two miserable years, four-and-twenty
months, eight-and-forty times the hours, the few hours, that I have been
worse than wasting here, and I am shipwrecked, fairly bulged. Yet I have
done everything, tried everything, and my career has been an eminent
career. Woe to the wretch who trusts to his pampered senses for
felicity! Woe to the wretch who flies from the bright goddess Sympathy,
to sacrifice before the dark idol Self-love! Ah! I see too late, we were
made for each other. Too late, I discover the beautiful results of this
great principle of creation. Oh! the blunders of an unformed character!
Oh! the torture of an ill-regulated mind!
'Give me a life with no fierce alternations of rapture and anguish, no
impossible hopes, no mad depression. Free me from the delusions which
succeed each other like scentless roses, that are ever blooming. Save me
from the excitement which brings exhaustion, and from the passion that
procreates remorse. Give me the luminous mind, where recognised and
paramount duty dispels the harassing, ascertains the doubtful, confirms
the wavering, sweetens the bitter.
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