deep,--images like these may give some faint shadow of what was the
situation of my bosom. My chained faculties broke loose; my maddening
passions, roused to tenfold fury, bore over their banks with impetuous,
resistless force, carrying every check and principle before them.
Counsel was an unheeded call to the passing hurricane; Reason a
screaming elk in the vortex of Malstrom; and Religion a
feebly-struggling beaver down the roarings of Niagara. I reprobated the
first moment of my existence; execrated Adam's folly-infatuated wish for
that goodly-looking but poison-breathing gift which had ruined him and
undone me; and called on the womb of uncreated night to close over me
and all my sorrows.

A storm naturally overblows itself. My spent passions gradually sunk
into a lurid calm; and by degrees I have subsided into the time-settled
sorrow of the sable-widower, who, wiping away the decent tear, lifts up
his grief-worn eye to look-for another wife.

Such is the state of man; to-day he buds
His tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And nips his root, and then he falls as I do.[15]

Such, Sir, has been the fatal era of my life. And it came to pass that
when I looked for sweet, behold bitter; and for light, behold darkness.

But this is not all: already the holy beagles begin to snuff the scent,
and I expect every moment to see them cast off, and hear them after me
in full cry; but as I am an old fox, I shall give them dodging and
doubling for it, and by and by I intend to earth among the mountains