confession of a reckless, daring spirit, who being imprisoned for
murder, commits suicide. The early developement of his bad passions is
admirably drawn, and altogether this is one of the most powerfully
written papers that we have lately met with.]


I was the youngest child of three; but before I had attained my tenth
year, I was an only one. I had always been the favourite of both my
parents, and now I was their idol. They hung upon my existence, as a
shipwrecked mariner clings to the last floating fragment of the gallant
bark that bore him; they lived, but while they held by me, in the rough
tossings of the ocean of life. I was not slow to discover my value in
their estimation, or to exercise, in its fullest extent, the capricious
tyranny of conscious power. Almost the earliest impression which my
ripening mind received, was a regal immunity from error--I could _do
no wrong_.

My education was not neglected. Alas! the only use I have ever made of
what I acquired, has been to gild my vices when acted, or refine upon
the manner of acting them while in contemplation. I look back, at this
moment, to the period of my life I am describing, as prosperous men
recall the day-spring of their fortunes. _They_, from the proud
eminence on which they stand, trace, step by step, in retrospective
view, the paths by which they ascended; and _I_, looking through
the dark vista of my by-gone years, behold the fatal series of crimes
and follies that stained their progress, stretching to my boyhood. The
gay and frolic _irregularities_, as they were gently termed, of
that untamed age, were the turbid source of the waters of misery in
which I am now engulphed, I was a lawless planet, running at will; and
the orbit I described laid waste more than one fair region of peace and