; and the shadow which foreruns him has
thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through
the dim valley, for the sympathy--I had nearly said for the pity--of
my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some
measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wish
them to seek out for me, in the details I am about to give, some
little oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. I would have them
allow--what they cannot refrain from allowing--that, although temptation
may have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus, at least,
tempted before--certainly, never thus fell. And is it therefore that he
has never thus suffered? Have I not indeed been living in a dream? And
am I not now dying a victim to the horror and the mystery of the wildest
of all sublunary visions?

I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable
temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable; and, in my
earliest infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the family
character. As I advanced in years it was more strongly developed;
becoming, for many reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my
friends, and of positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted
to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions.
Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own,
my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which
distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in
complete failure on their part, and, of course, in total triumph on
mine. Thenceforward my voice was a household law; and at an age when
few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to the
guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my
own actions.

My earliest recollections of a school-life, are connected with a large,
rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England,
where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all
the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like
and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in
fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues,
inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew
with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell,
breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of
the dusky atmo