and sorrowful, and brooding over my image; but gay,
dissipated, the dispenser of smiles, the prototype of joy. I contrasted
this account of her with the melancholy and gloom of my own feelings,
and I resented her seeming happiness as an insult to myself.

In this angry and fretful mood I returned to London. My empire was
soon resumed; and now, Linden, comes the most sickening part of my
confessions. Vanity is a growing and insatiable disease: what seems to
its desires as wealth to-day, to-morrow it rejects as poverty. I was at
first contented to know that I was beloved; by degrees, slow, yet sure,
I desired that others should know it also. I longed to display my power
over the celebrated and courted Lady Merton; and to put the last crown
to my reputation and importance. The envy of others is the food of
our own self-love. Oh, you know not, you dream not, of the galling
mortifications to which a proud woman, whose love commands her pride,
is subjected! I imposed upon Caroline the most humiliating, the most
painful trials; I would allow her to see none but those I pleased; to
go to no place where I withheld my consent; and I hesitated not to exert
and testify my power over her affections, in proportion to the publicity
of the opportunity.

Yet, with all this littleness, would you believe that I loved Caroline
with the most ardent and engrossing passion? I have paused behind her,
in order to kiss the ground she trod on; I have stayed whole nights
beneath her window, to catch one glimpse of her passing form, even
though I had spent hours of the daytime in her society; and, though my
love burned and consumed me like a fire, I would not breathe a single
wish against her innocence, or take advantage of my power to accomplish
what I knew from her virtue and pride no atonement could possibly repay.
Such are the inconsistencies of the heart, and such, while they prevent
our perfection, redeem us from the utterness of vice! Never, even in
my wildest days, was I blind to the glory of virtue, yet never, till
my latest years, have I enjoyed the faculty to avail myself of my
perception. I resembled the mole, which by Boyle is supposed to possess
the idea of light, but to be unable to comprehend the objects on which
it shines.

Among the varieties of my prevailing sin, was a weakness common enough
to worldly men. While I ostentatiously played off the love I had excited
I could not bear to show the love I felt. In our country, and pe