while they prevent our perfection, redeem us from the utterness of
vice! Never, even in my wildest days, was I blind to the glory of
virtue, yet never, till my latest years, have I enjoyed the faculty to
avail myself of my perception. I resembled the mole, which by Boyle
is supposed to possess the idea of light, but to be unable to
comprehend the objects on which it shines.

Among the varieties of my prevailing sin, was a weakness common enough
to worldly men. While I ostentatiously played off the love I had
excited I could not bear to show the love I felt. In our country, and
perhaps, though in a less degree, in all other highly artificial
states, enthusiasm or even feeling of any kind is ridiculous; and I
could not endure the thought that my treasured and secret affections
should be dragged from their retreat to be cavilled and carped at by--

"Every beardless, vain comparative."

This weakness brought on the catastrophe of my love; for, mark me,
Clarence, it is through our weaknesses that our vices are punished!
One night I went to a masquerade; and, while I was sitting in a remote
corner, three of my acquaintances, whom I recognized, though they knew
it not, approached and rallied me upon my romantic attachment to Lady
Merton. One of them was a woman of a malicious and sarcastic wit; the
other two were men whom I disliked, because their pretensions
interfered with mine; they were diners-out and anecdote-mongers.
Stung to the quick by their sarcasms and laughter, I replied in a
train of mingled arrogance and jest; at last I spoke slightingly of
the person in question; and these profane and false lips dared not
only to disown the faintest love to that being who was more to me than
all on earth, but even to speak of herself with ridicule and her