ause all nobler agitations that might have
ruffled the sensations occasionally, and all distresses even on the
narrowest scale that might have reawakened the solicitudes of love, by
opening necessities for sympathy--for counsel--or for mutual aid, had
been shut out by foresight too elaborate, or by prosperity too cloying.
But all this, had it otherwise been possible with my particular mind,
and at my early age, was utterly precluded by one remarkable peculiarity
in my temper. Whether it were that I derived from nature some jealousy
and suspicion of all happiness which seems too perfect and unalloyed--[a
spirit of restless distrust which in ancient times often led men to
throw valuable gems into the sea, in the hope of thus propitiating the
dire deity of misfortune, by voluntarily breaking the fearful chain of
prosperity, and led some of them to weep and groan when the gems thus
sacrificed were afterwards brought back to their hands by simple
fishermen, who had recovered them in the intestines of fishes--a
portentous omen, which was interpreted into a sorrowful indication that
the Deity thus answered the propitiatory appeal, and made solemn
proclamation that he had rejected it]--whether, I say, it were this
spirit of jealousy awaked in me by too steady and too profound a
felicity--or whether it were that great overthrows and calamities have
some mysterious power to send forward a dim misgiving of their advancing
footsteps, and really and indeed

'That in to-day already walks to-morrow;'--

or whether it were partly, as I have already put the case in my first
supposition, a natural instinct of distrust, but irritated and enlivened
by a particular shock of superstitious alarm; which, or whether any of
these causes it were that kept me apprehensive, and on the watch for
disastrous change, I will not here undertake to determine. Too certain
it is that I was so. I never ridded myself of an over-mastering and
brooding sense, shadowy and vague, a dim abiding feeling (that sometimes
was and sometimes was not exalted into a conscious presentiment) of some
great calamity travelling towards me; not perhaps immediately
impending--perhaps even at a great distance; but already--dating from
some secret hour--already in motion upon some remote line of approach.
This feeling I could not assuage by sharing it with Agnes. No motive
could be strong enough for persuading me to communicate so gloomy a
thought with one who, considering he