to form the tenure by which he holds his repose in life? The cases
which are cited from comedy of such a yearning after contempt, stand
upon a footing altogether different: _there_ the contempt is wooed as
a serviceable ally and tool of religious hypocrisy. But to me, at that
era of life, it formed the main guaranty of an unmolested repose; and
security there was not, on any lower terms, for the _latentis semita
vitae_. The slightest approach to any favorable construction of my
intellectual pretensions alarmed me beyond measure; because it pledged
me in a manner with the hearer to support this first attempt by a
second, by a third, by a fourth--O Heavens! there is no saying how far
the horrid man might go in his unreasonable demands upon me. I groaned
under the weight of his expectations; and, if I laid but the first
round of such a staircase, why, then, I saw in vision a vast Jacob's
ladder towering upwards to the clouds, mile after mile, league after
league; and myself running up and down this ladder, like any fatigue
party of Irish hodmen, to the top of any Babel which my wretched admirer
might choose to build. But I nipped the abominable system of extortion
in the very bud, by refusing to take the first step. The man could
have no pretence, you know, for expecting me to climb the third or
fourth round, when I had seemed quite unequal to the first. Professing
the most absolute bankruptcy from the very beginning, giving the man
no sort of hope that I would pay even one farthing in the pound, I
never could be made miserable by unknown responsibilities.

Still, with all this passion for being despised, which was so essential
to my peace of mind, I found at times an altitude--a starry
altitude--in the station of contempt for me assumed by my brother that
nettled me. Sometimes, indeed, the mere necessities of dispute carried
me, before I was aware of my own imprudence, so far up the staircase
of Babel, that my brother was shaken for a moment in the infinity of