ained with him still, and he sought to return again to his bed. 'It
is not by quitting the bed or the chair,' he said, 'that I need seek for
ease: it is by quitting the body.' I am oppressed, Mr. Lindsay, by a
somewhat similar feeling of uneasiness, and, at times, would fain cast
the blame on the circumstances in which I am placed. But I may be as
far mistaken as my poor father. I would fain live at peace with all
mankind--nay, more, I would fain love and do good to them all; but the
villain and the oppressor come to set their feet on my very neck, and
crush me into the mire--and must I not resist? And when, in some
luckless hour, I yield to my passions--to those fearful passions that
must one day overwhelm me--when I yield, and my whole mind is darkened
by remorse, and I groan under the discipline of conscience, then comes
the odious, abominable hypocrite--the devourer of widows' houses and
the substance of the orphan--and demands that my repentance be as
public as his own hollow, detestable prayers. And can I do other than
resist and expose him? My heart tells me it was formed to bestow--why
else does every misery that I cannot relieve render me wretched? It
tells me, too, it was formed not to receive--why else does the proffered
assistance of even a friend fill my whole soul with indignation? But ill
do my circumstances agree with my feelings. I feel as if I were totally
misplaced in some frolic of nature, and wander onwards in gloom and
unhappiness, seeking for my proper sphere. But, alas! these efforts of
uneasy misery are but the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the
walls of his cave."

I again began to experience, as on a former occasion, the o'ermastering
power of a mind larger beyond comparison than my own; but I felt it my
duty to resist the influence. "Yes, you are misplaced, my friend," I
said--"perhaps more decidedly so than any other man I ever knew; but is
not this characteristic, in some measure, of the whole species? We are
all misplaced; and it seems a part of the scheme of deity, that we
should work ourselves up to our proper sphere. In what other respect
does man so differ from the inferior animals as in those aspirations
which lead him through all the progressions of improvement, from the
lowest to the highest level of his nature?"

"That may be philosophy, my friend," he replied, "but a heart ill at
ease finds little of comfort in it. You knew my father: need I say he
was one of the excelle