A HUMAN HEART. 275 



duction, it must of course at once and without hesitation be pro- 

 nounced valueless, but, like other things, intrinsically destitute of 

 merit, may be thought to be endowed with interest extraneously 

 derived. 



I HAVE brought myself to a strange task. How inconceivable 

 that above all even I should sit down to lay bare the secrets of a 

 heart! Of a heart, oh, what a heart! but for I will ponder no 

 more. 



There are many who cannot understand the motives of Jean 

 Jacques. I understand them alas, the day! I am solitary, and a 

 wretch. How can I better dispel the horrors of the present, than 

 by calling up those of the past ? To the work ! I have spent years 

 in musing over them ; they are engraven on the tablets of my brain ; 

 how easy to trace them before me on the parchment ! Visible to the 

 sense, they may become less instant to the mind. The experiment, 

 at least, I will try. Who knows? it may calm this inward hell. 

 What I shall write, shall be as the transcript of my inner soul. No 

 eye can ever survey it. Like my thought it will be unseen, un- 

 imagined. I will, then, write all ! It is myself I should deceive by 

 suppressing or disguising truth. It is the problem of my own 

 nature I wish to solvethe history of my own heart I wish to re- 

 duce to the characters of the human pen. The occupation may 

 divert my pain, while the result may teach me certain secrets of my 

 breast I wish to know. Do I falsify? it is myself I delude; do I not 

 lay open my heart to its inward core ? it is myself I mock. For 

 the scroll to which these things shall be committed mortal can 

 never behold, with my spirit in the kindling of its own flame it shall 

 ascend, as this breast exhales its final sigh it shall moulder to its last 

 crumbling dust. In life, I will wear it next what it shall be the 

 living emblem of my heart! in death, like the hand which now 

 traces it, it shall be no more ! Farewell, then, deceit! thou wilt not 

 answer now. To the task, the task of unveiling a human heart, 

 a beating, throbbing heart, in all the appalling hideousness of truth! 

 Oh, the work is dread! On the threshold I feel the overwhelming 

 power of the sanctuary I would enter, The heart the human 

 heart ! my vision is already scared at its images. 



For years I have inhabited this spot. My abode is a cabin with 

 two chambers what a contrast to the splendour that once I have 

 dwelt amidst! This cabin is on the declivity of a hill. No footstep, 

 I am aware of, ever penetrated to it ; no eye, I imagine, ever rested 

 on it. It is not embosomed, but lost amid high forest trees, shrub- 

 bery, and grass, which have been allowed to grow wild like over- 

 grasses. The scene has not its equal in England, nor on earth, of 

 which I have any idea for dreariness; it is desolation personified 

 an abode for the witches in Macbeth, a place of storms and wailing, 

 solitude, and woe. Even now, as I write, comes the blast sweeping 

 down the misshapen gorges of the mountains. I see the ocean in 

 the distance, and it is its surge raging everlastingly over rocks and 



