w not how soon or how abruptly I
might be driven from any new situation; the appendages of the study in
which I had engaged were too cumbrous for this state of dependence and
uncertainty; they only served to give new sharpness to the enmity of my
foe, and new poignancy to my hourly-renewing distress.

But what was of greatest importance, and made the deepest impression
upon my mind, was my separation from the family of Laura. Fool that I
was, to imagine that there was any room for me in the abodes of
friendship and tranquillity! It was now first, that I felt, with the
most intolerable acuteness, how completely I was cut off from the whole
human species. Other connections I had gained, comparatively without
interest; and I saw them dissolved without the consummation of agony. I
had never experienced the purest refinements of friendship, but in two
instances, that of Collins, and this of the family of Laura. Solitude,
separation, banishment! These are words often in the mouths of human
beings; but few men except myself have felt the full latitude of their
meaning. The pride of philosophy has taught us to treat man as an
individual. He is no such thing. He holds necessarily, indispensably, to
his species. He is like those twin-births, that have two heads indeed,
and four hands; but, if you attempt to detach them from each other, they
are inevitably subjected to miserable and lingering destruction.

It was this circumstance, more than all the rest, that gradually gorged
my heart with abhorrence of Mr. Falkland. I could not think of his name
but with a sickness and a loathing that seemed more than human. It was
by his means that I suffered the loss of one consolation after another,
of every thing that was happiness, or that had the resemblance of
happiness.

The writing of these memoirs served me as a source of avocation for
several years. For some time I had a melancholy satisfaction in it. I
was better pleased to retrace the particulars of calamities that had
formerly afflicted me, than to look forward, as at other times I was too
apt to do, to those by which I might hereafter be overtaken. I conceived
that my story, faithfully digested, would carry in it an impression of
truth that few men would be able to resist; or, at worst, that, by
leaving it behind me when I should no longer continue to exist,
posterity might be induced to do me justice; and, seeing in my example
what sort of evils are entailed upon mankind by soc