put me in possession of all that was going on among them, and gave me the means of guarding against all danger of treachery or error on their part, and to maintain a mysterious reputation of having faculties and powers of observation little less than miraculous. How far I was acquainted at the time with the efforts made by you to obtain information of the proceedings of the party who occupied that house, and whether it was intention or indifference that prevented any attempts to interfere with your conduct, it would hardly be worth while now to explain.

"The object which I had proposed to myself at the outset of the undertaking I have spoken of, was completely accomplished before I met you at the sea. I had before that fully resolved to abandon the company I had organized, and I lingered in connexion with it less because its advantages continued, than because the inducements which the life I meant should succeed it held out were not strong enough to urge me to the decision of change. Of the events which brought about a separation between me and my allies, you are not uninformed. They originated in a blunder committed in relation to you, but the cause of that error which was earlier and deeper than appeared, lay in the indifference and presumption which had been induced in those connected with me, by wealth and long success,-for by that conservative tendency which on a large scale pervades the affairs of men, matters cannot long be divided into great accumulations on the one hand and great deficiencies on the other, for the former bears with it the growing seed of its own destruction, and the latter of its own re-establishment. You may, perhaps, be at a loss to conjecture why the subordinate members of this company should be anxious to prevent the discovery of the transactions by which your father had been deprived of his fortune, seeing that those affairs were the prior private dealings of myself and Thompson; but Thompson had been for a time connected with our general labours, and was possessed of a complete knowledge of all who were concerned therein, and it was understood by all engaged that the letters which he had written to Mr. Stanley contained matter which betrayed the whole association, and which touched the

earnest personal interest of every member implicated. Without following that history farther, you are possessed of the circumstances which, in completion of my original design, brought me here. The main reason for my having solicited your company at this time and place was to restore to you the estates of which I had despoiled your father. The title papers of that property are on the desk behind you. Take them when you go.

"I arrived in this spot with wealth and its luxuries abounding around me, with abundant sources of gratification to the intellect and taste, and with not a fear or a care to disturb my repose. There was no possibility of my retreat being invaded or my plans molested, and I pictured to myself a scene of contentment bounded only by the grave. And for a time my life was glad with as rich a vigour of delight as can visit the senses of a man of strength. Whatever a mind that in the present glowed with the might of fervent power, and in the memories of the past was soothed in its musings by scenes of splendour and sights of triumph, could give of bright and brilliant, was fully mine; and whatever annoyances a temper calm and self-centred, and beyond the mercy of petty griefs and troubles could keep off, I was delivered from; and I dwelt in the strong composure of a firm and free and manly nature. But it was not long before a cloud began to gather around me which no effort could permanently dispel; my mind grew listless, my spirit grew sombre: a melancholy haze of nameless fear dimmed the clear vigour of my views. My sleep became disturbed, and I never rose in the morning without feeling for an hour or two an inexplicable heaviness of heart which lay too deep for resolution to throw off. This usually passed away towards the middle of the day, and for the remaining hours I was cheerful. I thought at first that, like the dark-cloaked Prince of Denmark, my disposition might thus be saddened because I had 'forgone all custom of exercises,' and I accordingly began some extensive improvements in various parts of my estate which gave me an excuse for being on horseback a great part of the day. But I speedily found that the ardour of spirit which could alone make these exertions sufficient to banish my disease was itself destroyed by the disease I

combated, and that the labour which I followed fatigued and not refreshed. Failing thus to find any relief in domestic efforts, I meditated a return to the scenes of action which I had left, and a fresh bracing of my nature for the dark deeds of politics and passion. But the feelings of the night and the struggles of the day had weakened that might of soul with which I once looked out upon the world, and I felt a timidness of nerve and an inward apprehension, which seemed to tell me that the day of my pride was gone. The interest and the excitement, moreover, which once tinted action with ' 'hues that were words' and spoke of all that I conceived of glad and exalting, were dead within my bosom. I had mingled in the deepest contests of every court and capital in Europe, and I had left them because I was wearied and disgusted. I felt within me no force sufficient again to inspire those spots with that attraction of enchantment which was needed to react upon my decaying spirit. And even if the trial should prove successful, and hope should again gild my life with its immortal splendour, at the last I was to fail as now I failed, and youth must at some time yield, and joy decay, and existence fade into a lighted sepulchre; and what did it matter whether the grief,-which conscience told me must be tasted,-came now or then, save that the protracted wo would be more bitter. So I resolved to stay and struggle with my fate,-to live in peace, if peace would revisit me,-to die in solitude, if death were inevitable.

"From that moment, my calamities grew heavier and deeper, and the course of my nature was downward and downward. My passions had been exhausted by the perils of my youth, and they failed to sustain me in the hour of my decline. The passions are in the breast of genius the sources of life, and few survive their decay. The thought of God and the visions of a future world, which I had torn and banished from my intellect, seated themselves in my fancy and my feelings with a strength and fulness that would not be overcome. With the vacancy of nature and the silence of solitude around me, these considerations engrossed my being. Though I deny a deity and laugh at hell, there is not a moment that I do not think of God and judgment. It is

with me as if the voyager of a desert should raise his eyes and be assured there was no vulture nigh, while the beak of the monster was fastened in his heart. But if the day were the only period of my trial, I might conquer and destroy this power: it is the phantoms of sleep that I cannot resist. In the light I am living in a sphere external to all thoughts of heaven; but sleep seems to be a stream on which I pass into an inner spiritual world which angels and demons alone inhabit. Believe me, no man was ever an atheist in his dreams. That was a fine mythologic fancy that made the furies the daughters of night. Like the inward eye of the murderess-queen who wanders through her midnight palace, the darkness remembers what the day has drowned; and like her, the souls of men who can be calm in waking, are racked by nightly fears' and scourged in the torturing hour of the reign of slumber. In the process of clinical composure, the will sleeps first, the reason next, the imagination later, and the feelings last of all. I awake from these unutterable terrors unstrung and disheartened; and the stain and dye of the horror in which my spirit has been steeped, lies upon me through the remainder of the day. The unseen, polluting impressions that leave their darkening and degrading trail through the slumbering bosom, are sins which past years have fixed within him that then are soaking out; and when in waking hours, unfathered grief lies on his bosom, heavy but meaningless, and wakes a deep but vacant sigh, it is because conscience with instinctive pain then remembers acts which the reason has forgotten. Oh! if the memory of the intellect were as tenacious as the memory of the conscience, what a splendid creature man would be!— As splendid then as he is wretched now!

"In the dark and anguish-breathing hours that like waves of fire have washed over my spirit in this lonely chamber, my soul has unsaid what my understanding asserted, and my nature has recanted what my mind declared. I have laid before you the system upon which my life was built. Logic may, perhaps, never disprove its truth, yet I tell you that from the foundation to the finial it is false. Its construction consults but a portion of our powers; the soul of man-its mysterious

unseen changes, its undying sensibilities, its tremendous influence on the happiness of its owner,-is wholly overlooked. In studying what action one half the qualities of our nature can possibly produce upon the world, we forget to inquire what effect the world will certainly have upon the other half. He who sins becomes the slave of sin;-the spot upon the hands and the soil upon the garments may be rubbed off, or will wear off; but from the stain upon the mind, from the tinge upon the thoughts, how shall we be delivered? The memory of the act has become the state and condition of our existence; sin has become the atmosphere of our spirits; our thoughts, our hopes, our feelings, are for ever coloured by that dark vapour; for us the universe is black for aye; the hideous image sits at the fountain of our life, and poisons all the springs of our moral being :-the colour of the past is burned into our nature, and nothing but hell-fire will burn it out.

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"He who sins, sins doubly: he sins against God, and he sins against his own soul. In expiation of the former heaven has appointed a great atonement,-a sign whereon we may look and be forgiven. But of the latter sin there is no ablution; the white surface of the soul is fouled, and no flow of heart-rained tears, nor stream of sweated blood, shall wash it clean; the white robe of life is defiled, and never can it be restored to its virgin fairness. While I had dwelt in the polluted vaults of vice and intrigue, far from the upper air of natural virtue, I was satisfied to see that the fierce and flashing fervour of my vivid intellect flung off the sapping dampness of self-contempt; and it was only when on another side the foundations of my nature suddenly gave way, and my being sank down a ruin and a wreck, that I became aware that, all the while, other and more vital essences within me had been perishing in this dark and poisonous air. We may sneer or we may scowl at these feelings; but neither contempt nor hate will disturb the FACT of their existence. They have their being; and that theory, which like all worldly theories, does not provide for them, is a reasoning lie. Other considerations have pressed upon me, in the recent hours of bitter meditation, as demonstrative of

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