A HUMAN HEART. 279 



and anguish, and lamentation is one not exposed ! Yes, I have 

 wrung my hands, I have torn my hair, I have flung myself to earth, 

 I have heard accents escape my lips that to my own ear have sent 

 an echo that has palsied me. Yet would I not part with life, yet 

 could I not cut short the span of my existence. 



And, ah, how changed ! What I was once, what I am now ! 

 What bliss! what unexhausted, inexhaustible woe ! Let me consider, 

 I have spent years in this miserable abode. How many, I do not 

 know. I was once young; when I came hither I was not old. Is 

 my face wrinkled? I cannot tell. Once it was fair, divine ! What 

 it is now, I have not a remote thought. In a mirror I have never 

 gazed since since! why does my pen stagger? to what date do I 

 refer? No matter, in time, all shall be transcribed; but, for the 

 present . In the furthest and darkest extremity of the adjoining 

 chamber, encased in a frame of gold, stands a superb sheet of plated 

 glass. It is covered first with brown holland, then with baize nailed 

 on all sides, and to the floor, so that without forming a previous 

 design to the effect, I can never behold myself in it. This design 

 I have entertained, but I am without courage to execute it. Per- 

 haps, some day, I may possess the nerve. I should like to witness 

 how my agonies may have corrugated my brow, and distorted the 

 lines of a mouth that was once Phidian. My hair, probably, is 

 gray; the supposition shocks me. I must think no more. Horrible ! 

 yes, I am conscious of it, my form has lost the fineness of its sym- 

 metry, all the moulding of its once incomparable grace. I see it, 

 even my hand is in wrinkles, and my arm but with what meaning 

 do I thus weary myself? for my charms, had they not their day? 

 my beauty, was it not triumphant like the hosts that are covered 

 with victory ? Away, then, repining ! If I be fallen, it is by mine 

 own act, mine own deed. The world was not wide enough to give 

 scope to the capability of my faculties ; it could not understand, it 

 could not penetrate the subtlety of my character. I did a deed, 

 I did a deed it could not applaud, nor conceive the greatness of my 

 horrible heroism, so it chased me from it, hooted, vituperated me, 

 till it finally penned me in this odious retreat. I stand on the bleak 

 hills of my desolation, but I stand with my heart unscathed, my soul 

 indomitable as it ever was. Do I weep ? that world cannot see a 

 tear; am I crucified, and racked, and torn? that cold and ignoble 

 world knows not ; from it, at least, it is all veiled. But wherefore 

 thus do I look back upon the world ? why reproach what supplied 

 to me once joys like those of paradise? Singular ingratitude ! As 

 a child, was I not blessed ? Did not gladness, like flowers, enwreathe 

 the path of my infancy ? And the world was that sun which gave 

 pulsation to my powers. Ah ! and which brought my ruffian passions 

 to their height ; which poured the blood of madness in the veins of 

 my ambition ; which made me envy, and hate, and scorn ; which 

 swelled rny breast with the desires of hell ; which made me love, 

 but to feel the rack of jealousy; which plucked humanity from my 

 heart; which dazzled, led me on, uplifted me to the summits of its 



freatness, intoxicated, made me blind, and dizzy from the elevation 

 stood upon, then dashed me from that elevation, dashed me from 



