from _madness_.

A vision of my youth comes over me--a happy boyhood--a tree-embowered
home, babbling brooks, fertile lawns--a father's blessing--a mother's
kiss that was both joy and blessing--a brother's brave and tender
friendship--and first love, that dearest, sweetest, holiest charm of
all. O God! that those things were and are not! It is agony to recall
them.

Pass, too, the brief Elysian period of wedded love. Julia sleeps well
in her woodland grave. I was false to her memory.

If my boyhood were happy, my manhood was a melancholy one. A morbid
temperament, fostered by indulgence, dropped poison even in the cup of
bliss. I loved and I hated with intensity.

To my widowed home came, after the death of my wife, my fair cousin
Amy, and my young brother Norman. Both were orphans like myself. Amy
was a glorious young creature--my antithesis in every respect. She was
light hearted, I was melancholy; she was beautiful, I ill favored; she
was young, I past the middle age of life, arrived at that period when
philosophers falsely tell us that the pulses beat moderately, the
blood flows temperately, and the heart is tranquil. Fools! the fierce
passions of the soul belong not to the period of youth or early
manhood. But let my story illustrate my position.

Amy filled my lonely home with mirth and music. She rose with the
lark, and carolled as wildly and gayly the livelong day, till, like a
child tired of play, she sank from very exhaustion on her pure and
peaceful couch. Norman was her playmate. In early manhood he retained
the buoyant and elastic spirit of his youth. His was one of those
natures which never grow old. Have you ever noticed one of those aged
men, whose fresh cheeks and bright eyes, and ardent sympathy with all
that is youthful and animated, belie the chronicle of Time? Such might
have been the age of Norman, had not----But I am anticipating.

Between my cold and exhausted nature and Amy's warm, fresh heart, you
might have supposed that there could have been no union. Yet she
loved me warmly and well--loved me as a friend and father. I returned
her pure and innocent affection with a fierce passion. I longed to
possess her. The memory of her I had loved and lost was but as the
breath on the surface of a steel mirror, which heat displaces and
obliterates.

I was not long in perceiving the exact state of her feelings towards
me, and with that knowledge came the instantaneous conviction of her
fondness