pplied these remarks to the
illustration of my general enquiry. I was unintermitted in my assiduity,
and my collections promised to accumulate. Thus I was provided with
sources both of industry and recreation, the more completely to divert
my thoughts from the recollection of my past misfortunes.

In this state, so grateful to my feelings, week after week glided away
without interruption and alarm. The situation in which I was now placed
had some resemblance to that in which I had spent my earlier years, with
the advantage of a more attractive society, and a riper judgment. I
began to look back upon the intervening period as upon a distempered and
tormenting dream; or rather perhaps my feelings were like those of a
man recovered from an interval of raging delirium, from ideas of horror,
confusion, flight, persecution, agony, and despair! When I recollected
what I had undergone, it was not without satisfaction, as the
recollection of a thing that was past; every day augmented my hope that
it was never to return. Surely the dark and terrific menaces of Mr.
Falkland were rather the perturbed suggestions of his angry mind, than
the final result of a deliberate and digested system! How happy should I
feel, beyond the ordinary lot of man, if, after the terrors I had
undergone, I should now find myself unexpectedly restored to the
immunities of a human being!

While I was thus soothing my mind with fond imaginations, it happened
that a few bricklayers and their labourers came over from a distance of
five or six miles, to work upon some additions to one of the better sort
of houses in the town, which had changed its tenant. No incident could
be more trivial than this, had it not been for a strange coincidence of
time between this circumstance, and a change which introduced itself
into my situation. This first manifested itself in a sort of shyness
with which I was treated, first by one person, and then another, of my
new-formed acquaintance. They were backward to enter into conversation
with me, and answered my enquiries with an awkward and embarrassed air.
When they met me in the street or the field, their countenances
contracted a cloud, and they endeavoured to shun me. My scholars quitted
me one after another; and I had no longer any employment in my
mechanical profession. It is impossible to describe the sensations,
which the gradual but uninterrupted progress of this revolution produced
in my mind. It seemed as if I had s