h before man lived on it, and how he first arose and gradually
became the strange, complicated, but as he said, the glorious creature
he now is. Covering the earth with their creations and forming by the
power of their minds another world more lovely than the visible frame
of things, even all the world that we find in their writings. A
beautiful creation, he would say, which may claim this superiority to
its model, that good and evil is more easily seperated[:] the good
rewarded in the way they themselves desire; the evil punished as all
things evil ought to be punished, not by pain which is revolting to
all philanthropy to consider but by quiet obscurity, which simply
deprives them of their harmful qualities; why kill the serpent when
you have extracted his fangs?

The poetry of his language and ideas which my words ill convey held me
enchained to his discourses. It was a melancholy pleasure to me to
listen to his inspired words; to catch for a moment the light of his
eyes[;] to feel a transient sympathy and then to awaken from the
delusion, again to know that all this was nothing,--a dream--a shadow
for that there was no reallity for me; my father had for ever deserted
me, leaving me only memories which set an eternal barrier between me
and my fellow creatures. I was indeed fellow to none. He--Woodville,
mourned the loss of his bride: others wept the various forms of misery
as they visited them: but infamy and guilt was mingled with my
portion; unlawful and detestable passion had poured its poison into my
ears and changed all my blood, so that it was no longer the kindly
stream that supports life but a cold fountain of bitterness corrupted
in its very source.[60] It must be the excess of madness that could
make me imagine that I could ever be aught but one alone; struck off
from humanity; bearing no affinity to man or woman; a wretch on whom
Nature had set her ban.

Sometimes Woodville talked to me of himself. He related his history
brief in happiness and woe and dwelt with passion on his and Elinor's
mutual love. "She was["], he said, "the brightest vision that ever
came upon the earth: there was somthing in her frank countenance, in
her voice, and in every motion of her graceful form that overpowered
me, as if it were a celestial creature that deigned to mingle with me
in intercourse more sweet than man had ever before enjoyed. Sorrow
fled before her; and her smile seemed to possess an influence like
light to irra