the blights, the distortions, which beset the human being;
and which at such hours it would seem that no glories of free
agency could ever repay!

* * * * *

'There was, in the house, no apartment appropriated to the
purpose of a library, but there was in my father's room a
large closet filled with books, and to these I had free access
when the task-work of the day was done. Its window overlooked
wide fields, gentle slopes, a rich and smiling country, whose
aspect pleased without much occupying the eye, while a range
of blue hills, rising at about twelve miles distance, allured
to reverie. "Distant mountains," says Tieck, "excite the
fancy, for beyond them we place the scene of our Paradise."
Thus, in the poems of fairy adventure, we climb the rocky
barrier, pass fearless its dragon caves, and dark pine
forests, and find the scene of enchantment in the vale behind.
My hopes were never so definite, but my eye was constantly
allured to that distant blue range, and I would sit, lost in
fancies, till tears fell on my cheek. I loved this sadness;
but only in later years, when the realities of life had taught
me moderation, did the passionate emotions excited by seeing
them again teach how glorious were the hopes that swelled my
heart while gazing on them in those early days.

'Melancholy attends on the best joys of a merely ideal life,
else I should call most happy the hours in the garden, the
hours in the book closet. Here were the best French writers
of the last century; for my father had been more than half a