,
with sympathy indeed, but without pain, the following extracts from a
journal:--

'It was Thanksgiving day, (Nov., 1831,) and I was obliged to
go to church, or exceedingly displease my father. I almost
always suffered much in church from a feeling of disunion with
the hearers and dissent from the preacher; but to-day, more
than ever before, the services jarred upon me from their
grateful and joyful tone. I was wearied out with mental
conflicts, and in a mood of most childish, child-like
sadness. I felt within myself great power, and generosity,
and tenderness; but it seemed to me as if they were all
unrecognized, and as if it was impossible that they should
be used in life. I was only one-and-twenty; the past was
worthless, the future hopeless; yet I could not remember ever
voluntarily to have done a wrong thing, and my aspiration
seemed very high. I looked round the church, and envied all
the little children; for I supposed they had parents who
protected them, so that they could never know this strange
anguish, this dread uncertainty. I knew not, then, that none
could have any father but God. I knew not, that I was not
the only lonely one, that I was not the selected Oedipus, the
special victim of an iron law. I was in haste for all to be
over, that I might get into the free air. * *

'I walked away over the fields as fast as I could walk. This
was my custom at that time, when I could no longer bear the
weight of my feelings, and fix my attention on any pursuit;
for I do believe I never voluntarily gave way to these
thoughts one moment. The force I exerted I think, even now,
greater than I ever knew in any other character. But when I
could bear myself no longer, I walked many hours, till the
anguish was wearied out, and I returned in a state of prayer.
To-day all seemed to have reached its height. It seemed as if
I could never return to a world in which I had no place,--to
the mockery of humanities. I could not act a part, nor seem
to live any longer. It was a sad and sallow day of the late
autumn. Slow processions of sad clouds were passing over a
cold blue sky; the hues of earth were dull, and gray, and
brown, with sickly struggles of late green here and there;
sometimes a moaning gust of wind drove late, reluctant leaves
across the path;--there was no life els