Note 15: — Chapter IX

I ruminated in gloomy silence, on my forlorn, and hopeless, situation. 'If there be not a future state of being,' said I to myself, 'what is this!—Tortured in every stage of it, "Man cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down—he fleeth, as a shadow, and continueth not!"—I looked backward on my past life, and my heart sickened—its confidence in humanity was shaken—I looked forward, and all was cheerless. I had certainly committed many errors!—Who has not—who, with a fancy as lively, feelings as acute, and a character as sanguine, as mine? "What, in fact," says a philosophic writer,15 "is character?—the production of a lively and constant affection, and consequently, of a strong passion:"—eradicate that passion, that ferment, that leaven, that exuberance, which raises and makes the mind what it is, and what remains? Yet, let us beware how we wantonly expend this divine, this invigorating, power. Every grand error, in a mind of energy, in its operations and consequences, carries us years forward—precious years, never to be recalled!' I could find no substitute for the sentiments I regretted—for that sentiment formed my character; and, but for the obstacles which gave it force, though I might have suffered less misery, I should, I suspect, have gained less improvement; still adversity is a real evil; and I foreboded that this improvement had been purchased too dear.