more to me what it had been, a thirst; but not what it had been, a
reward. I occupied my thoughts--I laid up new hoards within my mind--I
looked around, and I saw few whose stores were like my own,--but where,
with the passion for wisdom still alive within me--where was that once
more ardent desire which had cheated me across so dark a chasm between
youth and manhood--between past and present life--the desire of applying
that wisdom to the service of mankind? Gone--dead--buried for ever in my
bosom, with the thousand dreams that had perished before it! When the
deed was done, mankind seemed suddenly to have grown my foes. I looked
upon them with other eyes. I knew that I carried within, that secret
which, if bared to-day, would make them loath and hate me,--yea, though I
coined my future life into one series of benefits on them and their
posterity! Was not this thought enough to quell my ardour--to chill
activity into rest? The more I might toil, the brighter honours I might
win--the greater services I might bestow on the world, the more dread and
fearful might be my fall at last! I might be but piling up the scaffold
from which I was to be hurled! Possessed by these thoughts, a new view of
human affairs succeeded to my old aspirings;--the moment a man feels that
an object has ceased to charm, he reconciles himself by reasonings to his
loss. 'Why,' said I; 'why flatter myself that I can serve--that I can
enlighten mankind? Are we fully sure that individual wisdom has ever, in
reality, done so? Are we really better because Newton lived, and happier
because Bacon thought?' This dampening and frozen line of reflection
pleased the present state of my mind more than the warm and yearning
enthusiasm it had formerly nourished. Mere worldly ambition from a boy I
had disdained;--the true worth of sceptres and crowns--the inquietude of
power--the humiliations of vanity--had never been disguised from my
sight. Intellectual ambition had inspired me. I now regarded it equally
as a delusion. I coveted light solely for my own soul to bathe in. I
would have drawn down the Promethean fire; but I would no longer have