erto known. I no longer satirized; I inquired: I
no longer derided; I examined. I looked from the natural proofs of
immortality to the written promise of our Father; I sought not to baffle
men, but to worship Truth; I applied myself more to the knowledge of
good and evil; I bowed my soul before the loveliness of Virtue; and
though scenes of wrath and passion yet lowered in the future, and I was
again speedily called forth to act, to madden, to contend, perchance to
sin, the Image is still unbroken, and the Votary has still an offering
for its Altar!

CHAPTER III.

THE HERMIT OF THE WELL.

THE thorough and deep investigation of those principles from which we
learn the immortality of the soul, and the nature of its proper ends,
leads the mind through such a course of reflection and of study; it
is attended with so many exalting, purifying, and, if I may so say,
etherealizing thoughts,--that I do believe no man has ever pursued it,
and not gone back to the world a better and a nobler man than he was
before. Nay, so deeply must these elevating and refining studies be
conned, so largely and sensibly must they enter the intellectual system,
that I firmly think that even a sensualist who has only considered
the subject with a view to convince himself that he is clay, and has
therefore an excuse to the curious conscience for his grosser desires;
nay, should he come to his wished-for yet desolate conclusion, from
which the abhorrent nature shrinks and recoils, I do nevertheless firmly
think, should the study have been long and deep, that he would wonder to
find his desires had lost their poignancy and his objects their charm.
He would descend from the Alp he had climbed to the low level on which
he formerly deemed it a bliss to dwell, with the feeling of one who,
having long drawn in high places an empyreal air, has become unable to
inhale the smoke and the thick vapour he inhaled of yore. His soul once
aroused would stir within him, though he felt it not, and though he grew
not a believer, he would cease to be only the voluptuary.

I meant at one time to have here stated the arguments which had
perplexed me on one side, and those which afterwards convinced me on
the other. I do not do so for many reasons, one of which will suffice;
namely, the evident and palpable circumstance that a dissertation of
that nature would, in a biography like the present, be utterly out of
place and season. Perhaps, however, at a later perio