Several years passed before my plans were matured. I reduced all to
writing. On one side of the page I noted my resolutions, with the means
of carrying them out; on the other side, every objection that could be
raised: on a third page I wrote down the answers. Every objection was
invited, every difficulty anticipated, and every detail thoroughly
weighed; nothing was thought too great or too insignificant.

I submitted the whole to my wisest councillors, and encouraged them to
speak their inmost thoughts. They were lost in admiration, but entreated
me to abandon my design. My life, they said, would be the penalty were I
to attempt to carry out any part of my projects.

Some said that the design would be beautiful as the subject of a poem--
as the aspiration of a great mind to arrive at an ideal perfection,
which could not however be realised until evil itself had ceased to
exist. That to attempt to move the Mestua Mountain[1] would be a task
not less hopeless: that I might as well endeavour to walk up our great
Cataract[2] without being engulfed in the sea of foaming waters! Not one
offered encouragement to proceed with the good work.

[Footnote 1: Supposed to be the largest and firmest of
mountains, which, since its first upheaving, has
resisted the inroads of our mighty seas, as well as the
most violent electrical disturbances of our world.]

[Footnote 2: See p. 44.]

Neither their arguments nor their prayers deterred me. I proceeded
cautiously, but with a resolution that feared not death.