to open before me, this child deepened my love to him by recalling the
image of his mother; and what other image was there that I so much
wished to keep before me, whether waking or asleep? At the time to
which I am now coming but too rapidly, this child, still our only one,
and unusually premature, was within four months of completing his third
year; consequently Agnes was at that time in her twenty-first year; and
I may here add, with respect to myself, that I was in my twenty-sixth.

But, before I come to that period of wo, let me say one word on the
temper of mind which so fluent and serene a current of prosperity may
be thought to have generated. Too common a course I know it is, when
the stream of life flows with absolute tranquillity, and ruffled by no
menace of a breeze--the azure overhead never dimmed by a passing cloud,
that in such circumstances the blood stagnates: life, from excess and
plethora of sweets, becomes insipid: the spirit of action droops: and
it is oftentimes found at such seasons that slight annoyances and
molestations, or even misfortunes in a lower key, are not wholly
undesirable, as means of stimulating the lazy energies, and disturbing
a slumber which is, or soon will be, morbid in its character. I have
known myself cases not a few, where, by the very nicest gradations, and
by steps too silent and insensible for daily notice, the utmost harmony
and reciprocal love had shaded down into fretfulness and petulance,
purely from too easy a life, and because all nobler agitations that
might have ruffled the sensations occasionally, and all distresses even
on the narrowest scale that might have re-awakened the solicitudes of
love, by opening necessities for sympathy, for counsel, or for mutual
aid, had been shut out by foresight too elaborate, or by prosperity too
cloying. But all this, had it otherwise been possible with my
particular mind, and at my early age, was utterly precluded by one
remarkable peculiarity in my temper. Whether it were that I derived