The world, the creation, all things that lived, moved, and were, became
to me objects contributing to one passionate, and, I fancied, one exalted
end. I suffered the lowlier pleasures of life, and the charms of its more
common ties, to glide away from me untasted and unfelt. As you read, in
the East, of men remaining motionless for days together, with their eyes
fixed upon the heavens, my mind, absorbed in the contemplation of the
things above its reach, had no sight of what passed around. My parents
died, and I was an orphan. I had no home, and no wealth; but wherever the
field contained a flower, or the heavens a star, there was matter of
thought and food for delight to me. I wandered alone for months together,
seldom sleeping but in the open air, and shunning the human form as that
part of God's works from which I could learn the least. I came to
Knaresbro': the beauty of the country, a facility in acquiring books from
a neighbouring library that was open to me, made me resolve to settle
there. And now, new desires opened upon me with new stores: I became
seized, possessed, haunted with the ambition of enlightening my race. At
first, I had loved knowledge solely for itself: I now saw afar an object
grander than knowledge. To what end, said I, are these labours? Why do I
feed a lamp which consumes itself in a desert place? Why do I heap up
riches, without asking who shall gather them? I was restless and
discontented. What could I do? I was friendless; I was strange to my
kind; I was shut out from all uses by the wall of my own poverty. I saw
my desires checked when their aim was at the highest: all that was proud,
and aspiring, and ardent in my nature, was cramped and chilled. I
exhausted the learning within my reach. Where, with my appetite excited
not slaked, was I, destitute and penniless, to search for more? My
abilities, by bowing them to the lowliest tasks, but kept me from
famine:--was this to be my lot for ever? And all the while, I was thus
grinding down my soul in order to satisfy the vile physical wants, what