se questions have been suggested to me by an incident that happened
this morning.

"Looking out of window, I saw a brutal carter, on the road before the
house, beating an over-loaded horse. A year since I should have
interfered to protect the horse, without a moment's hesitation. If the
wretch had been insolent, I should have seized his whip, and applied the
heavy handle of it to his own shoulders. In past days, I have been more
than once fined by a magistrate (privately in sympathy with my offence)
for assaults committed by me in the interests of helpless animals. What
did I feel now? Nothing but a selfish sense of uneasiness, at having been
accidentally witness of an act which disturbed my composure. I turned
away, regretting that I had gone to the window and looked out.

"This was not an agreeable train of thought to follow. What could I do? I
was answered by the impulse which commands me to paint.

"I sharpened my pencils, and opened my box of colors, and determined to
produce a work of art. To my astonishment, the brutal figure of the
carter forced its way into my memory again and again. It (without in the
least knowing why) as if the one chance of getting rid of this curious
incubus, was to put the persistent image of the man on paper. It was done
mechanically, and yet done so well, that I was encouraged to add to the
picture. I put in next the poor beaten horse (another good likeness!);
and then I introduced a life-like portrait of myself, giving the man the
sound thrashing that he had deserved. Strange to say, this representation
of what I ought to have done, relieved my mind as if I had actually done
it. I looked at the pre-eminent figure of myself, and felt good, and
turned to my Trials, and read them over again, and liked them better than
ever."

"Thursday.--The bookseller has found a second-hand copy of the French
Trials, and has sent them to me (as he expresses it) 'on approval'.

"I more than approve--I admire; and I more than admire--I imitate. These
criminal stories are told with a dramatic power, which has impelled me to
try if I can rival the clever French narrative. I found a promising
subject by putting myself in my grandfather's place, and tracing the
means by which it had occurred to me that he might have escaped the
discovery of his crime.

"I cannot remember having read any novel with a tenth part of the
interest that absorbed me, in constructing my imaginary train of
circumstances. So co