of that jealous spirit of mistaken devotion which keeps the soul in
perpetual sickness, and invests the innocent enjoyments of life with
a character of sin and severity. It was this gloomy feeling that could
alone have strangled in their birth those sensations which the wisdom
of God has given as a security in some degree against sin, by opening
to the heart of man sources of pleasure, for which the soul is not
compelled to barter away her innocence, as in those of a grosser nature.
I may be wrong in analyzing the sensation, but for the first time in my
life I felt anxious and unhappy; yet, according to my own opinions, I
should have been otherwise. I was startled at what I experienced, and
began to consider it as a secret intimation that I had chosen a wrong
time for my journey. I even felt as if it would not prosper--as if some
accident or misfortune would befall me ere my return. The boat might
sink, as in 1796: this was quite alarming. The miraculous experiment
on the pond here occurred to me with full force, and came before my
imagination in a new point of view. The drenching I got had a deep
and fearful meaning. It was ominous--it was prophetic,--and sent by a
merciful Providence to deter me from attending the pilgrimage at this
peculiar time--perhaps on this particular day: to-morrow the spell might
be broken, the danger past, and the difference of a single day could be
nothing. Just at this moment an unlucky hare, starting from an adjoining
thicket, scudded across my path, as if to fill up the measure of these
ominous predictions. I paused, and my foot was on the very turn to the
rightabout, when instantly a thought struck me which produced a reaction
in my imagination. Might not all this be the temptation of the devil,
suggested to prevent me from performing this blessed work? not the hare
itself be some------? In short, the counter-current carried me with
it. I had commenced my journey, and every one knows that when a man
commences a journey it is unlucky to turn back. On I went, but still
with a subdued and melancholy tone of feeling. If I met a cheerful
countryman, his mirth found no kindred spirit in me: on the contrary,
my taciturnity seemed to infect him; for, after several ineffectual'
attempts at conversation, he gradually became silent, or hummed a tune
to himself, and, on parting, bade me a short, doubtful kind of good day,
looking over his shoulder, as he departed, with a face of scrutiny and
surprise.