276 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



When here is a world swarming with fools to scorn ; and a 

 wide air, tremulous with the beat of hearts, to trample on ; a 

 Universe pregnant with some hideous Power to be defied ! 

 And then the proud exultation — to stalk on, beneath God's 

 own lights, wronging his creatures, and taunting him to send 

 Ms bolts. ' 



A new energy was possessing me. Life became stronger 

 than it ever had been before, though my body was wasting. 

 When the first wild whirl of this delirious excitement had 

 passed away, the horrible transformation was completed, for 

 an ashy-pale cold twilight, which no sunshine could dispel or 

 warm, had settled upon my whole being — an icy ring palpably 

 clung around my heart, which beat sharply and fast in the 

 centre — ^my forehead was cold, but the brain was seething 

 and glowing behind it. 



I felt a chill, unnatural, flaming in my eyes. I was afraid 

 to look at them ; I saw little children shrink in afiiright as 

 they gazed at me. Then I knew there was hate and hell in 

 them, and felt glad — for there was some of the old leaven left 

 in spite of me — ^that innocence would be alarmed of its own 

 Instincts, and avoid me. I was stolidly sullen or hysterically 

 merry, and felt the strangest inclination to laugh when I saw 

 others weep. I would hide my face in my handkerchief, and 

 laugh until my sides ached at what were to others the most 

 touching exhibitions of grief. 



I read incessantly, and out of aU literature managed to 

 extract the bitter waters. My sharpened and morbid fancy 

 conceived that it could trace the creed of the logician, with 

 its doubts, its sophisms, and its' sneers, through "all records 

 of all times." Yet I regarded the Berkeley, Volney, and Tom 

 Paine school with profound contempt. These people attempted 

 — ^vulgarly enough — ^to "reason" themselves into atheism and 

 universal scepticism — nothing could have been more absurd ; 

 and Hume would have been placed in the same category, but 

 that he took to sneering and generalization. Voltaire was 



