arly a studious disposition, and it
was decided to give me an accomplished education, with reference to
my occupying, could I attain it at a future day, a chair in some
university. My mother was a very religious woman. From the first, she
had a morbid sense of the responsibility of bringing up a boy. She
believed my way to manhood was beset by innumerable temptations, almost
impossible to escape, difficult to be resisted, and absolutely ruinous
to my soul, if yielded to. She preached to me incessantly. She kept
me from the society of boys of my own age, for fear I should be
contaminated,--and from the approach of any of the other sex, lest my
mind should be diverted from serious matters and led into wantonness
and folly. She would have made a priest of me, had it not been for
my father;--he objected. His brother, for whom I was named, was a
distinguished professor, to whom I bore, as he thought, a close
resemblance, and he desired I should imitate him in my pursuits. I had
good abilities, and was neither inefficient nor wanting in resolution or
industry. At first I longed for natural life and society; but by degrees
habit helped me to endure, and finally to conquer. In fact, I was taught
that I was doing God service in cultivating an ascetic life. My studies
were pursued with success. I rapidly mastered what was placed before
me, and my relations were proud of my progress. At the usual period the
ordinary craving for female society became strong in me. My mother took
great pains to impress on me that here commenced my first struggle with
Satan, and, if I yielded, I should certainly and beyond all peradventure
become a child of the Devil. I was in a degree conscientious. I was
ambitious to attain to a holy life. I believed what my mother had from
my infancy labored so hard to inculcate, and I trod out with an iron
step every fresh rising emotion of my heart, every genuine passion of
my nature. But I suffered much. The imagination could not always be
subdued, and there were periods when. I felt that the "strong man armed"
had possession of me. Nevertheless his time was not come, and at length
the struggle was over. It was not that I had gained a laudable control
of myself; but, having crucified every rebellious thought, there was
nothing left for control. I had marked my victory by extermination.
To live was no joy; neither was it specially the reverse: a long,
monotonous, changeless platitude; yet no desire to quit the ter