lity of the heart; and I
only awoke from my deceit when the phantom I had worshipped melted into
snow. Whatever I pursued partook of the energy, yet fitfulness of my
nature; mingling to-day in the tumults of the city, and to-morrow alone
with my own heart in the solitude of unpeopled nature; now revelling
in the wildest excesses, and now tracing, with a painful and unwearied
search, the intricacies of science; alternately governing others, and
subdued by the tyranny which my own passions imposed--I passed through
the ordeal unshrinking yet unscathed. "The education of life," says De
Stael, "perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous." I do
not inquire, Monkton, to which of these classes I belong; but I feel
too well, that though my mind has not been depraved, it has found no
perfection but in misfortune; and that whatever be the acquirements of
later years, they have nothing which can compensate for the losses of
our youth.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

I returned to England. I entered again upon the theatre of its world;
but I mixed now more in its greater than its lesser pursuits. I looked
rather at the mass than the leaven of mankind; and while I felt aversion
for the few whom I knew, I glowed with philanthropy for the crowd which
I knew not.

It is in contemplating men at a distance that we become benevolent. When
we mix with them, we suffer by the contact, and grow, if not malicious
from the injury, at least selfish from the circumspection which our
safety imposes but when, while we feel our relationship, we are not
galled by the tie; when neither jealousy, nor envy, nor resentment are
excited, we have nothing to interfere with those more complacent and
kindliest sentiments which our earliest impressions have rendered
natural to our hearts. We may fly men in hatred because they have galled
us, but the feeling ceases with the cause: none will willingly feed long
upon bitter thoughts. It is thus that, while in the narrow circle in
which we move we suffer daily from those who approach us, we can, in
spite of our resentment to them, glow with a general benevolence to the
wider relations from which we are remote; that while smarting
beneath the treachery of friendship, the stinging of ingratitude, the
faithfulness of love, we would almost sacrifice our lives to realise
some idolised theory of legislation; and that, distrustful, calculating,
selfish in private, there are thousands who would, with a cred