re would the Future be?--in hell. It is useless to say
_where_ the Present is, for most of us know; and as for the Past, _what_
predominates in memory?--_Hope baffled_. Ergo, in all human affairs, it
is Hope--Hope--Hope. I allow sixteen minutes, though I never counted
them, to any given or supposed possession. From whatever place we
commence, we know where it all must end. And yet, what good is there in
knowing it? It does not make men better or wiser. During the greatest
horrors of the greatest plagues, (Athens and Florence, for example--see
Thucydides and Machiavelli,) men were more cruel and profligate than
ever. It is all a mystery. I feel most things, but I know nothing,
except -------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------[21]

"_Thought for a speech of Lucifer, in the tragedy of Cain:_--

"Were _Death_ an _evil_, would _I_ let thee _live_?
Fool! live as I live--as thy father lives,
And thy son's sons shall live for evermore.

[Footnote 21: Thus marked, with impatient strokes of the pen, by himself
in the original.]

"Past Midnight. One o' the clock.

"I have been reading W.F.S * * (brother to the other of the name) till
now, and I can make out nothing. He evidently shows a great power of
words, but there is nothing to be taken hold of. He is like Hazlitt, in
English, who _talks pimples_--a red and white corruption rising up (in
little imitation of mountains upon maps), but containing nothing, and
discharging nothing, except their own humours.

"I dislike him the worse, (that is, S * *,) because he always seems upon
the verge of meaning; and, lo, he goes down like sunset, or melts like a
rainbow, leaving a rather rich confusion,--to which, however, the above
comparisons do too much honour.

"Continuing to read Mr. F. S * *. He is not such a fool as I took him
for, that is to say, when he speaks of the North. But still he speaks of
things _all over the world_ with a kind of authority that a philosopher
would disdain, and a man of common sense, feeling, and knowledge of his
own ignorance, would be ashamed of. The man is evidently wanting to make
an impression, like his brother,--or like George in the Vicar of
Wakefield, who found out that all the good things had been said already
on the right side, and therefore 'dressed up some paradoxes' upon