separate language from our race! Learning, science, philosophy, the
world of men and of imagination, I ransacked--and for what? I centred my
happiness in wisdom. I looked upon the aims of others with a scornful
and loathing eye. I held commune with those who have gone before me; I
dwelt among the monuments of their minds, and made their records familiar
to me as friends: I penetrated the womb of nature, and went with the
secret elements to their home: I arraigned the stars before me, and
learned the method and the mystery of their courses: I asked the tempest
its bourn, and questioned the winds of their path. This was not
sufficient to satisfy my thirst for knowledge, and I searched in this
lower world of new sources to content it. Unseen and unsuspected, I saw
and agitated the springs of the automaton that we call 'the Mind.' I
found a clue for the labyrinth of human motives, and I surveyed the
hearts of those around me as through a glass. Vanity of vanities! What
have I acquired? I have separated myself from my kind, but not from
those worst enemies, my passions! I have made a solitude of my soul, but
I have not mocked it with the appellation of Peace.

"Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."--TACITUS.
"They make a solitude, and call it peace."--BYRON.

"In flying the herd, I have not escaped from myself; like the wounded
deer, the barb was within me, and that I could not fly!" With these
thoughts he turned from his reverie, and once more endeavoured to charm
his own reflections by those which ought to speak to us of quiet, for
they are graven on the pages of the dead; but his attempts were as idle
as before. His thoughts were still wandering and confused, and could
neither be quieted nor collected: he read, but he scarcely distinguished
one page from another: he wrote--the ideas refused to flow at his call;
and the only effort at connecting his feelings which even partially