-3 7- GREATLY INCREASED SENSIBILITY. 27 



of water terra fir ma. With the utmost alacrity I immedi- 

 ately proceeded to remove the mud from my nether limbs, 

 and an adjournment to the neighbouring river soon removed 

 all the adventitious stuff I had acquired in my luckless leap. 

 I laughed a good deal on thinking of it, and soon banished 

 it from my mind, nor the whole of that day did I think of 

 it. But at night while lying alone on my bed in utter dark- 

 ness, when the circumstance came back on me, it awakened 

 thoughts of a fearful description ; for the keep might have 

 been fourteen feet deep, as well as three or four, and I 

 might have sunk and died a most horrible death, and my 

 mysterious disappearance must have been a source of great 

 sorrow to my friends; and when I thought of all these 

 things, I was so horrified that I eagerly courted sleep to 

 banish thoughts of so terrible a description ; and even yet, 

 after the lapse of many a month, my heart throbs with 

 unusual emotions, and the thoughts excited are still painful 

 and horrible. 



" The two preceding cases are curious in showing how 

 false the common idea is, that when causes of joy or grief 

 are over, the effects will cease ; but in all minds of any 

 power, both will be immeasurably increased by reflection 

 deepening their hues and heightening their effects,* and pro- 

 ducing deep and ineffaceable impressions on the heart of 

 the thinker. 



* * # * 



"January \2th. What a great and wondrous change 

 comes over the mind emerging from boyhood to youth, at 

 sixteen or seventeen. What a change spreads itself over 

 every thought and feeling, and how does it deepen and 

 render more intense every emotion. When I was a boy 

 at school, my thoughts were brilliant, my wishes ardent, 

 and my cares few ; and, lo ! now what an alteration : that 



