observant, and by misfortune sarcastic, I looked upon the various
colourings of society with a searching and philosophic eye: I unravelled
the intricacies which knit servility with arrogance and meanness with
ostentation; and I traced to its sources that universal vulgarity of
inward sentiment and external manner, which, in all classes, appears to
me to constitute the only unvarying characteristic of our countrymen. In
proportion as I increased my knowledge of others, I shrunk with a deeper
disappointment and dejection into my own resources. The first moment of
real happiness which I experienced for a whole year was when I found
myself about to seek, beneath the influence of other skies, that more
extended acquaintance with my species which might either draw me to them
with a closer connection, or at last reconcile me to the ties which
already existed.

I will not dwell upon my adventures abroad: there is little to interest
others in a recital which awakens no interest in one's self. I sought
for wisdom, and I acquired but knowledge. I thirsted for the truth, the
tenderness of love, and I found but its fever and its falsehood. Like
the two Florimels of Spenser, I mistook, in my delirium, the delusive
fabrication of the senses for the divine reality of the heart; and I only
awoke from my deceit when the phantom I had worshipped melted into snow.
Whatever I pursued partook of the energy, yet fitfulness of my nature;
mingling to-day in the tumults of the city, and to-morrow alone with my
own heart in the solitude of unpeopled nature; now revelling in the
wildest excesses, and now tracing, with a painful and unwearied search,
the intricacies of science; alternately governing others, and subdued by
the tyranny which my own passions imposed--I passed through the ordeal
unshrinking yet unscathed. "The education of life," says De Stael,
"perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous." I do not
inquire, Monkton, to which of these classes I belong; but I feel too