erver, would have extorted veneration. Energy is perhaps of
all qualities the most valuable; and a just political system would
possess the means of extracting from it, thus circumstanced, its
beneficial qualities, instead of consigning it, as now, to
indiscriminate destruction. We act like the chemist, who should reject
the finest ore, and employ none but what was sufficiently debased to fit
it immediately for the vilest uses. But the energy of these men, such as
I beheld it, was in the highest degree misapplied, unassisted by liberal
and enlightened views, and directed only to the most narrow and
contemptible purposes.

The residence I have been describing might to many persons have appeared
attended with intolerable inconveniences. But, exclusively of its
advantages as a field for speculation, it was Elysium, compared with
that from which I had just escaped. Displeasing company, incommodious
apartments, filthiness, and riot, lost the circumstance by which they
could most effectually disgust, when I was not compelled to remain with
them. All hardships I could patiently endure, in comparison with the
menace of a violent and untimely death. There was no suffering that I
could not persuade myself to consider as trivial, except that which
flowed from the tyranny, the frigid precaution, or the inhuman revenge
of my own species.

My recovery advanced in the most favourable manner. The attention and
kindness of my protector were incessant, and the rest caught the spirit
from his example. The old woman who superintended the household still
retained her animosity. She considered me as the cause of the expulsion
of Gines from the fraternity. Gines had been the object of her
particular partiality; and, zealous as she was for the public concern,
she thought an old and experienced sinner for a raw probationer but an
ill exchange. Add to which, that her habits inclined her to moroseness
and discontent, and that persons of her complexion seem unable to exist
without some object upon which to pour out the superfluity of their
gall. She lost no opportunity, upon the most trifling occasion, of
displaying her animosity; and ever and anon eyed me with a furious
glance of canine hunger for my destruction. Nothing was more evidently
mortifying to her, than the procrastination of her malice; nor could she
bear to think that a fierceness so gigantic and uncontrollable should
show itself in nothing more terrific than the pigmy spite of a
cha