of the heart were repaired by the experience of the
mind. I passed at once, like Melmoth, from youth to age. What were
any longer to me the ordinary avocations of my contemporaries? I had
exhausted years in moments--I had wasted, like the Eastern Queen, my
richest jewel in a draught. I ceased to hope, to feel, to act, to burn;
such are the impulses of the young! I learned to doubt, to reason, to
analyse: such are the habits of the old! From that time, if I have not
avoided the pleasures of life, I have not enjoyed them. Women, wine,
the society of the gay, the commune of the wise, the lonely pursuit of
knowledge, the daring visions of ambition, all have occupied me in turn,
and all alike have deceived me; but, like the Widow in the story of
Voltaire, I have built at last a temple to "Time, the Comforter:" I have
grown calm and unrepining with years; and, if I am now shrinking from
men, I have derived at least this advantage from the loneliness first
made habitual by regret; that while I feel increased benevolence to
others, I have learned to look for happiness only in myself.

They alone are independent of Fortune who have made themselves a
separate existence from the world.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

I went to the University with a great fund of general reading, and
habits of constant application. My uncle, who, having no children of
his own, began to be ambitious for me, formed great expectations of my
career at Oxford. I staid there three years, and did nothing! I did
not gain a single prize, nor did I attempt anything above the ordinary
degree. The fact is, that nothing seemed to me worth the labour of
success. I conversed with those who had obtained the highest academical
reputation, and I smiled with a consciousness of superiority at the
boundlessness of their vanity, and the narrowness of their views. The
limits of the distinction they had gained seemed to them as wide as the
most extended renown; and the little knowledge their youth had acquired
only appeared to them an excuse for the ignorance and the indolence of
maturer years. Was it to equal these that I was to labour? I felt that
I already surpassed them! Was it to gain their good opinion, or, still
worse, that of their admirers? Alas! I had too long learned to live for
myself to find any happiness in the respect of the idlers I despised.

I left Oxford at the age of twenty-one. I succeeded to the large estates
of my inheritance, and for the first