only half understood, and less than half exercised. Of this I could
have no doubts after all that he had said, done and suffered in the
cause. But, alongst with this, I was also certain that he was possessed
of some supernatural power, of the source of which I was wholly
ignorant. That a man could be a Christian and at the same time a
powerful necromancer, appeared inconsistent, and adverse to every
principle taught in our Church and from this I was led to believe that
he inherited his powers from on high, for I could not doubt either of
the soundness of his principles or that he accomplished things
impossible to account for. Thus was I sojourning in the midst of a
chaos of confusion. I looked back on my by-past life with pain, as one
looks back on a perilous journey, in which he has attained his end,
without gaining any advantage either to himself or others; and I looked
forward, as on a darksome waste, full of repulsive and terrific shapes,
pitfalls, and precipices, to which there was no definite bourn, and
from which I turned with disgust. With my riches, my unhappiness was
increased tenfold; and here, with another great acquisition of
property, for which I had pleaed, and which I had gained in a dream, my
miseries and difficulties were increasing. My principal feeling, about
this time, was an insatiable longing for something that I cannot
describe or denominate properly, unless I say it was for utter oblivion
that I longed. I desired to sleep; but it was for a deeper and longer
sleep than that in which the senses were nightly steeped. I longed to
be at rest and quiet, and close my eyes on the past and the future
alike, as far as this frail life was concerned. But what had been
formerly and finally settled in the councils above, I presumed not to
call in question.

In this state of irritation and misery was I dragging on an existence,
disgusted with all around me, and in particular with my mother, who,
with all her love and anxiety, had such an insufferable mode of
manifesting them that she had by this time rendered herself exceedingly
obnoxious to me. The very sound of her voice at a distance went to my
heart like an arrow, and made all my nerves to shrink; and, as for the
beautiful young lady for whom they told me I had been so much
enamoured, I shunned all intercourse with her or hers, as I would have
done with the Devil. I read some of their letters and burnt them, but
refused to see either the young lady or her