of desperation had given me a might which laughed their energy to scorn. They might break against me and break over me, but could not sweep me with them. It was the effort to escape from them and be purely happy without a thought being ruffled by a contest with annoyance which had given them such power to harass; but when I renounced the hoarded hope of joy, and flung myself against the storm that it might do its worst, it had no farther strength to harm me. I battled against the keenness of sensibility, and it shrank away within me; I flung feebleness beneath my feet, and a firmer peace than I had ever known was the reward I reaped. In that hour I felt the immortal truth of that sentiment of the poet which should be graven on the breast of every man: To be weak, is to be miserable.' "With an eye that kindled with the fire of a fixed determination, and a brow where control was throned with calmness, I looked out upon the sea with an elevation and a happiness, which till then, I had not enjoyed. It was not that I had found aught to gratify the longings of my bosom, but that I had rooted from my heart the sting and lust of insane desire; and then the natural temper of a mind at rest, was a state of placid joy. Till now, I had urged my feelings outward and striven to find a pleasure in the external, and this effort had racked my hosom with a necessary pain; but when I threw up the struggle, and tore from my mind the cravings to possess the palpable, which had fixed upon a thousand objects and distracted it in all the directions where they clung, I left my spirit to itself, and in the composure of quietude then welled from its depths the living waters of natural contentment. Thus did I turn right on the failure of all my hopes, and reached success; and thus did I enter the perfect palace I had striven to frame, by walking over the ruins of the scaffolding I had erected to build it. The heart is its own place,' and for creating that food of happiness which it requires is 'all-sufficient to itself.' It has vitality and a generating principle within itself, and if we will refrain to cumber it with material impressions and thoughts which are alien to its essence, it will evolve supplies that satisfy, while the mind forgets to toil, and the wish has ceased to strive and stimulate. In truth, the heart alone works out that peace which makes life lovely, and of its operations the reason takes no cognizance, and man, whose reason is his identity, is unaware till he feels the effect; but if by any qualities of whose exertion we are conscious we labour to be happy and to enjoy, we bring to the task powers which have no such function, and whose exercise in a work unfitted to their strength gives pain and failure. Thus did I learn, that henceforth I was to be happy by no more caring for happiness, and that I must let feeling sway about as it will, and place all my joy in the serenity of my mind. I am not certain that you will understand what I have said, for peculiar feelings of the spirit are like peculiar senses of the body, and their qualities cannot be understood save by those who possess them. But I have thought it necessary to give you this detail, in order that you might learn that the circumstance which gave me all my power and stamped upon my life that individuality which it has exhibited, was the enfranchisement which I in this hour obtained from all influence of feeling, and that you might learn that this release was obtained by the psycholical discovery then made, that feeling is not the impression of an object or an incident, but the heart's resistance to the impression -the passion's reaction against an impulse; and that suffering, both of pain and pleasure, is annihilated by letting sensibility take its free swing through the breast and making no opposition to it, just as the boisterous breakers would be destroyed by removing the barrier of the shore on which they lean to crest themselves. Thus by preserving my bosom passive, and never minding what was wrought within it, I have delivered myself from feeling and have been left capable to carve out in action the history of an existence, whose only architect was reason, and you will guess how free I was when you remember that feeling is the only bail we give to virtue, the only veto which morality has upon our conduct, and the only handle by which Deity directs our souls. In confirmation of what I have said, I may remark that the Scriptures, which contain a system of the most profound philosophy which was ever deduced from a consummate penetration into the nature of man, propose to liberate us from the tyranny of evil passions by preserving the soul in peace. Fret not thyself because of the ungodly,' says King David; and again, 'Fret not thyself, else shalt thou be tempted to do evil.' From that moment I had attained that majesty of moral freedom which is mental power, and which, perhaps, the Stoic sought; "Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex denique regum." By including within my own bosom all that I was subject to, or cared for, and placing all my consciousness in my intellect, I was beyond all outward sway whether its throne were earth or heaven or hell. Punishment could no more fasten upon my soul, than upon the ever-yielding form of Proteus. God had no more control of me; he might go his way, and I should go mine. I had learned the secret by which he keeps his own supremacy, for his nature charged with sensibility is yet painless in its power. Henceforth, there were two of us to reign. I have said, that the apathy which the Stoics assumed, was perhaps, the independence which I had won. But I marked the error which destroyed their system. They sought, without composing their spirits to that peacefulness which is piety, to stave off suffering by indifference or defiantness, and yet dwell in the quietness of thought or conversation, and not compel their attention to be absorbed by some great object and their mind to be ever struggling after some great end. This is being wise by halves. It will, indeed, take away the sting which there is in the influences of all which is external; but there live within the soul wild lusts and tyrannous desires, and longings after that which excites and interests, and if these have no aim nor quarry, the tumult of their restiveness will make the breast uneasy, and having nothing outward to stay their hunger they will agitate and annoy the calmness of the heart. To be thoroughly beyond the reach of disturbance and weakness, we must forget our moral being; we must lose our personality in the madness of a mind goaded by ambition, and the eagerness of an unresting intellect, must drink up all the softness of sensibility. This rapid vehemence of reason can only be kept up by the incessant excitement of action. As the nightingale leans its breast against a thorn to sing, so must attention be braced against some great effort that the mute melody of the heart's composure may gush forth. This necessity I distinctly saw, and that idleness might not fret the knot by which I had bound the unruliness of passion, I resolved to plunge into the strife of action and entertain reflections with only the various events of safe or successless enterprise. Before, "When I returned to my home on that evening, I was a far different man from what I had gone out. it had seemed as if all and all things had been leagued to persecute and pain me; now, I looked resolutely upon the scene of life which was around me, and hostility shrank back, and I was safe and free. What if taunt and insult were showered upon me? I could suffer, yet not be overwhelmed. I despised opinion; happy in the selfish ardour of an earnest intellect, and the strong clear sense of individuality. Cutting off all mental fellowship with externality, and finding in the depths of my own glowing spirit all the joy I sought, I was beyond injury and above assault. Sweet is the taste of strong existence; the full throb of concentered life is the most strenuous bliss we know. That secured, we are cut loose from all the fastenings and the fetters by which the pursuit of happiness binds us to the world and draws us abroad. No man who has not attained this contentedness with self, can feel that he is wholly delivered from the thraldom of surrounding things, and equal to endeavour, promptly and unpausingly, every thing which his wish suggests or his reason recommends. The seeking or the cherishment of love, regard for character or voices of praise, admiration of things or respect for men, these and other sentiments which connect us with what we see, compromit the energy of the mind to dare what it desires. For the mind leaves its trail upon the objects on which with meekness or regard it clings or lingers, and thus are they no longer the passive prey of power, but portions of a soul which that subtraction hath weakened, and thus have we given hostages to enterprise. I resolved to place my enjoyment on none and nothing but myself; certain, thus, that the sources of pleasure would only fail with life, I determined that My own feelings should be my meed The only guerdon I would ever know. My life should thenceforth have only the interest that there is in inward might, and the joy that dwells in kingliness of thought. Upon none other can the Eternal feed, nor can his bliss be any thing but the fruition of his own essence. I tore from my nature all those ties of affection and consideration which, though they be Lilliputian, confine us to the earth. And when love and fear, which are the two-edged sword of the cherubim, whose waving drives back the soul from attempting the apparent paradise of unrestrained desire, had been stricken from their throne, is it wonderful that the spirit darkened into a demon of ambition? The heart in its naked savage state burns with a fierce jealousy of things and a ferocious hate of men; and all the virtues which our imperfect state attains, are but the rest or the restraint of passions never subdued. And thus has it been wisely said by one whose genius may speak e'en bonneted,' to Shakspeare's, and whose words have in them as much of the trumpet tone of immortality as any that have startled the silence of centuries. O, sages have found out that man is born For various ends-to love, to know. Has ever “This feeling, which, when its object is an individual, is concentrated into malignity, becomes ambition when it spreads over a broader scene of persons, place, and time. But in all its forms it is fed by bitterness and directed by selfishness. The expansion of its object takes from it that vehemence and strangling turbidness of fervour which when it strives with individuals disturbs the possessor's breast with a surcharge of feeling, |