have taken lessons from the brothel and the hell; I have watched feeling
in its unguarded sallies, and drawn from the impulse of the moment
conclusions which gave the lie to the previous conduct of years. But all
knowledge brings us disappointment, and this knowledge the most--the
satiety of good, the suspicion of evil, the decay of our young dreams,
the premature iciness of age, the reckless, aimless, joyless indifference
which follows an overwrought and feverish excitation--These constitute
the lot of men who have renounced _hope_ in the acquisition of _thought_,
and who, in learning the motives of human actions, learn only to despise
the persons and the things which enchanted them like divinities before.



FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

I told you, dear Monkton, in my first letter, of my favorite retreat in
Mr. Mandeville's grounds. I have grown so attached to it, that I spend
the greater part of the day there.

I am not one of those persons who always perambulate with a book in their
hands, as if neither nature nor their own reflections could afford them
any rational amusement. I go there more frequently _en paresseux_ than
_en savant_: a small brooklet which runs through the grounds broadens at
last into a deep, clear, transparent lake. Here fir and elm and oak
fling their branches over the margin and beneath their shade I pass all
the hours of noon-day in the luxuries of a dreamer's reverie. It is
true, however, that I am never less idle than when I appear the most so.
I am like Prospero in his desert island, and surround myself with
spirits. A spell trembles upon the leaves; every wave comes fraught to
me with its peculiar music: and an Ariel seems to whisper the secrets of