uld then have had a better notion of the
Cromwells and Mohammeds of the past than we have now, nor judged those
as utter impostors who were probably half dupes. But to return to
myself. I think you will already be able to answer your own question,
why I did not turn author, now that we have given a momentary
consideration to the penalties consequent on such a profession. But in
truth, as I near the close of my life, I often regret that I had not
more courage, for there is in us all a certain restlessness in the
persuasion, whether true or false, of superior knowledge or intellect,
and this urges us on to the proof; or, if we resist its impulse; renders
us discontented with our idleness and disappointed with the past. I have
everything now in my possession which it has been the desire of my later
years to enjoy: health, retirement, successful study, and the affection
of one in whose breast, when I am gone, my memory will not utterly
pass away. With these advantages, added to the gifts of fortune, and an
habitual elasticity of spirit, I confess that my happiness is not free
from a biting and frequent regret: I would fain have been a better
citizen; I would fain have died in the consciousness not only that I had
improved my mind to the utmost, but that I had turned that improvement
to the benefit of my fellow-creatures. As it is, in living wholly
for myself, I feel that my philosophy has wanted generosity; and my
indifference to glory has proceeded from a weakness, not, as I once
persuaded myself, from a virtue but the fruitlessness of my existence
has been the consequence of the arduous frivolities and the petty
objects in which my early years were consumed; and my mind, in losing
the enjoyments which it formerly possessed, had no longer the vigour to
create for itself a new soil, from which labour it could only hope
for more valuable fruits. It is no contradiction to see those who
most eagerly courted society in their youth shrink from it the most
sensitively in their age; for they who possess certain advantages,
and are morbidly vain of them, will naturally be disposed to seek that
sphere for which those advantages are best calculated: and when youth
and its concomitants depart, the vanity so long fed still remains, and
perpetually mortifies them by recalling not so much the qualities
they have lost, as the esteem which those qualities conferred; and by
contrasting not so much their own present alteration, as the change