uried for ever in
my bosom, with the thousand dreams that had perished before it! When the
deed was done, mankind seemed suddenly to have grown my foes. I looked
upon them with other eyes. I knew that I carried within, that secret
which, if bared to-day, would make them loath and hate me,--yea, though
I coined my future life into one series of benefits on them and their
posterity! Was not this thought enough to quell my ardour--to chill
activity into rest? The more I might toil, the brighter honours I might
win--the greater services I might bestow on the world, the more dread
and fearful might be my fall at last! I might be but piling up the
scaffold from which I was to be hurled! Possessed by these thoughts, a
new view of human affairs succeeded to my old aspirings;--the moment a
man feels that an object has ceased to charm, he reconciles himself by
reasonings to his loss. 'Why,' said I; 'why flatter myself that I can
serve--that I can enlighten mankind? Are we fully sure that individual
wisdom has ever, in reality, done so? Are we really better because
Newton lived, and happier because Bacon thought?' This dampening and
frozen line of reflection pleased the present state of my mind more than
the warm and yearning enthusiasm it had formerly nourished. Mere worldly
ambition from a boy I had disdained;--the true worth of sceptres and
crowns--the inquietude of power--the humiliations of vanity--had never
been disguised from my sight. Intellectual ambition had inspired me. I
now regarded it equally as a delusion. I coveted light solely for my
own soul to bathe in. I would have drawn down the Promethean fire; but
I would no longer have given to man what it was in the power of
circumstance alone (which I could control not) to make his enlightener
or his ruin--his blessing or his curse. Yes, I loved--I love
still;--could I live for ever, I should for ever love knowledge! It is
a companion--a solace--a pursuit--a Lethe. But, no more!--oh! never more
for me was the bright ambition that makes knowledge a means, not end.
As, contrary to the vulgar notion, the bee is said to gather her honey
unprescient of the winter, labouring without a motive, save the labour,
I went on, year after year, hiving all that the earth presented to my
toils, and asking not to what use. I had rushed into a dread world, that
I might indulge a dream. Lo! the dream was fled; but I could not retrace
my steps.

"Rest now became to me the sole to kalon--the