THE LIFTED VEIL


Give me no light, great Heaven, but such as turns
To energy of human fellowship;
No powers beyond the growing heritage
That makes completer manhood.




CHAPTER I


The time of my end approaches. I have lately been subject to attacks of
_angina pectoris_; and in the ordinary course of things, my physician
tells me, I may fairly hope that my life will not be protracted many
months. Unless, then, I am cursed with an exceptional physical
constitution, as I am cursed with an exceptional mental character, I
shall not much longer groan under the wearisome burthen of this earthly
existence. If it were to be otherwise--if I were to live on to the age
most men desire and provide for--I should for once have known whether the
miseries of delusive expectation can outweigh the miseries of true
provision. For I foresee when I shall die, and everything that will
happen in my last moments.

Just a month from this day, on September 20, 1850, I shall be sitting in
this chair, in this study, at ten o'clock at night, longing to die, weary
of incessant insight and foresight, without delusions and without hope.
Just as I am watching a tongue of blue flame rising in the fire, and my