ed in his
correspondent a lady who had appealed to him for assistance,
no doubt for her husband. With Sir Robert (an English banker
in Paris) and Lady Smyth, Paine formed a fast friendship
which continued through life. Sir Robert was born in 1744,
and married (1776) a Miss Blake of Hanover Square, London.
He died in 1802 of illness brought on by his imprisonment
under Napoleon. Several of Paine's poems were addressed to
Lady Smyth.--_Editor._

FROM "THE CASTLE IN THE AIR," TO THE "LITTLE CORNER OF THE WORLD."

Memory, like a beauty that is always present to hear her-self
flattered, is flattered by every one. But the absent and silent goddess,
Forgetfulness, has no votaries, and is never thought of: yet we owe her
much. She is the goddess of ease, though not of pleasure.

When the mind is like a room hung with black, and every corner of it
crowded with the most horrid images imagination can create, this kind
speechless goddess of a maid, Forgetfulness, is following us night
and day with her opium wand, and gently touching first one, and then
another, benumbs them into rest, and at last glides them away with the
silence of a departing shadow. It is thus the tortured mind is restored
to the calm condition of ease, and fitted for happiness.

How dismal must the picture of life appear to the mind in that dreadful
moment when it resolves on darkness, and to die! One can scarcely
believe such a choice was possible. Yet how many of the young and
beautiful, timid in every thing else, and formed for delight, have shut
their eyes upon the world, and made the waters their sepulchral bed! Ah,
would they in that crisis, when life and death are before them, and
each within their reach, would they but think, or try to think, that
Forgetfulness will come to their relief, and lull them into ease, they
could stay their hand, and lay hold of life. But there is a necromancy
in wretchedness that entombs the mind, and increases the misery, by
shutting out every ray of light and hope. It makes the wretched
falsely believe they will be wretched ever. It is the most fatal of all
dangerous delusions; and it is only when this necromantic night-mare of
the mind begins to vanish, by being resisted, that it is discovered to
be but a tyrannic spectre. All grief, like all things else, will yield
to the obliterating power of time. While despair is preying on the mind,
time and its effects are preying on desp