1828. ] A Leaf from my Autobiography. 37 
honorary member. My diminution in all matters was great, and my 
condition was soon accounted littte better than civil death. Aye! and 
what despondency followed! what strange notions of abandonment and 
solitude! ~ As a recluse, 1 wandered through some years of my prime, 
and have only of late mixed myself with the herd of my fellow-creatures. 
Now am I constantly possessed with longings and eager wishes—I know 
not what about, but sufficiently marked to tell me that I am not a con- 
tented man. A parcel of barren tenets and foolish theories makes up 
the round of my contemplations ; and I frankly confess, that a more 
unreasonable reasonable being is not easily to be found. The want of a 
steady friend and helpmate is now as clearly felt by me as it was for- 
merly the subject of my scorn. But the word “wife” is a hedgehog 
of a thousand bristly terrors. I cannot turn it any way, but it still con- 
tinues horrible ; and yet, conscious of my necessity, I deem the world’s 
arrangement a bad one that provides no fit substitute for the ecclesiastical 
remedy. Wife !—that usurper of your thoughts, as of right ; dabbling in 
the little mysteries of your mind; and diminishing the stock of your 
own ideas, by sharing some, and appropriating others.—Wife !—with 
all the attendant increase of household linen and women servants !— 
Wife! that makes herself the substantive, while you are drawn in as a 
paltry adjective, to give her respectability and a name—fortunate if you 
do not sink down to a mere expletive !—No, no; I could not endure the 
delights of uxoriousness again. How provoking, and yet how pleasant, 
to think of the vast mass of population scattered over this green earth, 
with their different passions, tendencies, and faculties! Of all these, 
how many must there be so closely adapted to one’s-self, by so near a 
resemblance, so happy a sympathy, as to stir up every energy in one’s 
system, if by chance one or more of such brothers could be discovered. 
There are, I know, some of my fellow-men, whom, could I but meet, I 
should love for ever. My heart is attracted to an invisible corner of the 
globe—where, perhaps, in a barbarous land, lives the partner of my 
individual nature, subject to my frailties, breathing my hopes, and 
unkindly separated from me by nothing but the space between the places 
of our birth. This has been my favourite belief; and to seek from 
amongst the creatures by whom I am surrounded some one thus allied to 
me by coincidence of character, is, and long has been, the endeavour in 
which my best pleasures are centred.-Now to my story. 
It was in the Holyhead Mail that I was travelling up to town, when 
one evening, shortly after dusk, the door was opened by the guard, for 
the admission of a female passenger. The coach had been pulled up 
by the side of a respectable gateway, and two ladies, as it might be, or 
a lady and her maid, stood in consultation close by. ‘ You had better 
come in, Hannah,” said one of them, “ you'll find it very cold outside.”” 
“ If you please, Ma’am,” returned the other, “ I am afraid of being 
unwell, if I do not sit in the open air; I’d rather go outside, indeed, 
Ma’am.” 
“ Very well, then,” replied the mistress, “do as you please.” Upon 
which she called the guard, and, in answer to a question which I could 
not hear, something about “an elderly gentleman,” reached my ear, 
with a very unpleasant accent. The lady got into the coach, immersed, 
for some time, in the midst of shawls and cloaks, from which having at 
last extricated herself, she quietly subsided into a seat opposite my own. 
What devil possessed me, I can never say, but the important hour 
