or knowledge, and I searched in this
lower world of new sources to content it. Unseen and unsuspected, I saw
and agitated the springs of the automaton that we call 'the Mind.' I
found a clue for the labyrinth of human motives, and I surveyed the
hearts of those around me as through a glass. Vanity of vanities! What
have I acquired? I have separated myself from my kind, but not from
those worst enemies, my passions! I have made a solitude of my soul, but
I have not mocked it with the appellation of Peace.

"Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."--TACITUS.
"They make a solitude, and call it peace."--BYRON.

"In flying the herd, I have not escaped from myself; like the wounded
deer, the barb was within me, and that I could not fly!" With these
thoughts he turned from his reverie, and once more endeavoured to charm
his own reflections by those which ought to speak to us of quiet, for
they are graven on the pages of the dead; but his attempts were as idle
as before. His thoughts were still wandering and confused, and could
neither be quieted nor collected: he read, but he scarcely distinguished
one page from another: he wrote--the ideas refused to flow at his call;
and the only effort at connecting his feelings which even partially
succeeded, was in the verses which I am about to place before the
reader. It is a common property of poetry, however imperfectly the gift
be possessed, to speak to the hearts of others in proportion as the
sentiments it would express are felt in our own; and I subjoin the lines
which bear the date of that evening, in the hope that, more than many
pages, they will show the morbid yet original character of the
writer, and the particular sources of feeling from which they took the
bitterness that pervades them.

KNOWLEDGE.

Ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat
Semper, et in curis consumit inanibus aevum.--Lucret.

'Tis midnight! Round the lamp which o'er
My chamber sheds its lonely beam,
Is wisely spread the varied lore
Which feeds in youth our feverish dream

The dream--the thirst--the wild desire,
Delirious yet divine-to know;
Around to roam--above aspire
And drink the breath of Heaven below!

From Ocean-Earth-the Stars-the Sky
To lift mysterious Nature's pall;
And bare before the kindling eye
In MAN the darkest mist of all--

Alas! wha