ted to sit down
again; I reeled out of the room, and hastened to bury myself in
solitude. The unexpectedness of the incident took from me all
precaution, and overwhelmed my faculties. The penetrating Laura observed
my behaviour; but nothing further occurred to excite her attention to it
at that time; and, concluding from my manner that enquiry would be
painful to me, she humanely suppressed her curiosity.

I afterwards found that Mr. Falkland had been known to the father of
Laura; that he had been acquainted with the story of Count Malvesi, and
with a number of other transactions redounding in the highest degree to
the credit of the gallant Englishman. The Neapolitan had left letters in
which these transactions were recorded, and which spoke of Mr. Falkland
in the highest terms of panegyric. Laura had been used to regard every
little relic of her father with a sort of religious veneration; and, by
this accident, the name of Mr. Falkland was connected in her mind with
the sentiments of unbounded esteem.

The scene by which I was surrounded was perhaps more grateful to me,
than it would have been to most other persons with my degree of
intellectual cultivation. Sore with persecution and distress, and
bleeding at almost every vein, there was nothing I so much coveted as
rest and tranquillity. It seemed as if my faculties were, at least for
the time, exhausted by the late preternatural intensity of their
exertions, and that they stood indispensably in need of a period of
comparative suspension.

This was however but a temporary feeling. My mind had always been
active, and I was probably indebted to the sufferings I had endured, and
the exquisite and increased susceptibility they produced, for new
energies. I soon felt the desire of some additional and vigorous
pursuit. In this state of mind, I met by accident, in a neglected corner
of the house of one of my neighbours, with a general dictionary of four
of the northern languages. This incident gave a direction to my
thoughts. In my youth I had not been inattentive to languages. I
determined to attempt, at least for my own use, an etymological analysis
of the English language. I easily perceived, that this pursuit had one
advantage to a person in my situation, and that a small number of books,
consulted with this view, would afford employment for a considerable
time. I procured other dictionaries. In my incidental reading, I noted
the manner in which words were used, and a