I VISITED Naples in the year 1818. On the 8th of December of
that year, my companion and I crossed the Bay, to visit the
antiquities which are scattered on the shores of Baiae. The
translucent and shining waters of the calm sea covered fragments of
old Roman villas, which were interlaced by sea-weed, and received
diamond tints from the chequering of the sun-beams; the blue and
pellucid element was such as Galatea might have skimmed in her car
of mother of pearl; or Cleopatra, more fitly than the Nile, have
chosen as the path of her magic ship. Though it was winter, the
atmosphere seemed more appropriate to early spring; and its genial
warmth contributed to inspire those sensations of placid delight,
which are the portion of every traveller, as he lingers, loath to
quit the tranquil bays and radiant promontories of
Baiae.
We visited the so called Elysian Fields and Avernus: and
wandered through various ruined temples, baths, and classic spots;
at length we entered the gloomy cavern of the Cumaean Sibyl. Our
Lazzeroni bore flaring torches, which shone red, and almost dusky,
in the murky subterranean passages, whose darkness thirstily
surrounding them, seemed eager to imbibe more and more of the
element of light. We passed by a natural archway, leading to a
second gallery, and enquired, if we could not enter there also. The
guides pointed to the reflection of their torches on the water that
paved it, leaving us to form our own conclusion; but adding it was
a pity, for it led to the Sibyl's Cave. Our curiosity and
enthusiasm were excited by this circumstance, and we insisted upon
attempting the passage. As is usually the case in the prosecution
of such enterprizes, the difficulties decreased on examination. We
found, on each side of the humid pathway, "dry land for the sole of
the foot."
At length we arrived at a large, desert, dark cavern, which
the Lazzeroni assured us was the Sibyl's Cave. We were sufficiently
disappointed—Yet we examined it with care, as if its blank, rocky
walls could still bear trace of celestial visitant. On one side was
a small opening. Whither does this lead? we asked: can we enter
here?—"Questo poi, no,"—said the wild looking savage, who held the
torch; "you can advance but a short distance, and nobody visits
it."
"Nevertheless, I will try it," said my companion; "it may
lead to the real cavern. Shall I go alone, or will you accompany
me?"
I signified my readiness to proceed, but our guides protested
against such a measure. With great volubility, in their native
Neapolitan dialect, with which we were not very familiar, they told
us that there were spectres, that the roof would fall in, that it
was too narrow to admit us, that there was a deep hole within,
filled with water, and we might be drowned. My friend shortened the
harangue, by taking the man's torch from him; and we proceeded
alone.
The passage, which at first scarcely admitted us, quickly
grew narrower and lower; we were almost bent double; yet still we
persisted in making our way through it. At length we entered a
wider space, and the low roof heightened; but, as we congratulated
ourselves on this change, our torch was extinguished by a current
of air, and we were left in utter darkness. The guides bring with
them materials for renewing the light, but we had none—our only
resource was to return as we came. We groped round the widened
space to find the entrance, and after a time fancied that we had
succeeded. This proved however to be a second passage, which
evidently ascended. It terminated like the former; though something
approaching to a ray, we could not tell whence, shed a very
doubtful twilight in the space. By degrees, our eyes grew somewhat
accustomed to this dimness, and we perceived that there was no
direct passage leading us further; but that it was possible to
climb one side of the cavern to a low arch at top, which promised a
more easy path, from whence we now discovered that this light
proceeded. With considerable difficulty we scrambled up, and came
to another passage with still more of illumination, and this led to
another ascent like the former.
After a succession of these, which our resolution alone
permitted us to surmount, we arrived at a wide cavern with an
arched dome-like roof. An aperture in the midst let in the light of
heaven; but this was overgrown with brambles and underwood, which
acted as a veil, obscuring the day, and giving a solemn religious
hue to the apartment. It was spacious, and nearly circular, with a
raised seat of stone, about the size of a Grecian couch, at one
end. The only sign that life had been here, was the perfect
snow-white skeleton of a goat, which had probably not perceived the
opening as it grazed on the hill above, and had fallen headlong.
Ages perhaps had elapsed since this catastrophe; and the ruin it
had made above, had been repaired by the growth of vegetation
during many hundred summers.
The rest of the furniture of the cavern consisted of piles of
leaves, fragments of bark, and a white filmy substance, resembling
the inner part of the green hood which shelters the grain of the
unripe Indian corn. We were fatigued by our struggles to attain
this point, and seated ourselves on the rocky couch, while the
sounds of tinkling sheep-bells, and shout of shepherd-boy, reached
us from above.
At length my friend, who had taken up some of the leaves
strewed about, exclaimed, "This is the Sibyl's cave; these are
Sibylline leaves." On examination, we found that all the leaves,
bark, and other substances, were traced with written characters.
What appeared to us more astonishing, was that these writings were
expressed in various languages: some unknown to my companion,
ancient Chaldee, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, old as the Pyramids.
Stranger still, some were in modern dialects, English and Italian.
We could make out little by the dim light, but they seemed to
contain prophecies, detailed relations of events but lately passed;
names, now well known, but of modern date; and often exclamations
of exultation or woe, of victory or defeat, were traced on their
thin scant pages. This was certainly the Sibyl's Cave; not indeed
exactly as Virgil describes it, but the whole of this land had been
so convulsed by earthquake and volcano, that the change was not
wonderful, though the traces of ruin were effaced by time; and we
probably owed the preservation of these leaves, to the accident
which had closed the mouth of the cavern, and the swift-growing
vegetation which had rendered its sole opening impervious to the
storm. We made a hasty selection of such of the leaves, whose
writing one at least of us could understand; and then, laden with
our treasure, we bade adieu to the dim hypaethric cavern, and after
much difficulty succeeded in rejoining our guides.
During our stay at Naples, we often returned to this cave,
sometimes alone, skimming the sun-lit sea, and each time added to
our store. Since that period, whenever the world's circumstance has
not imperiously called me away, or the temper of my mind impeded
such study, I have been employed in deciphering these sacred
remains. Their meaning, wondrous and eloquent, has often repaid my
toil, soothing me in sorrow, and exciting my imagination to daring
flights, through the immensity of nature and the mind of man. For
awhile my labours were not solitary; but that time is gone; and,
with the selected and matchless companion of my toils, their
dearest reward is also lost to me—
Di mie tenere frondi altro lavoro
Credea mostrarte; e qual fero
pianeta
Ne' nvidio insieme, o mio nobil
tesoro?
I present the public with my latest discoveries in the slight
Sibylline pages. Scattered and unconnected as they were, I have
been obliged to add links, and model the work into a consistent
form. But the main substance rests on the truths contained in these
poetic rhapsodies, and the divine intuition which the Cumaean
damsel obtained from heaven.
I have often wondered at the subject of her verses, and at
the English dress of the Latin poet. Sometimes I have thought,
that, obscure and chaotic as they are, they owe their present form
to me, their decipherer. As if we should give to another artist,
the painted fragments which form the mosaic copy of Raphael's
Transfiguration in St. Peter's; he would put them together in a
form, whose mode would be fashioned by his own peculiar mind and
talent. Doubtless the leaves of the Cumaean Sibyl have suffered
distortion and diminution of interest and excellence in my hands.
My only excuse for thus transforming them, is that they were
unintelligible in their pristine condition.
My labours have cheered long hours of solitude, and taken me
out of a world, which has averted its once benignant face from me,
to one glowing with imagination and power. Will my readers ask how
I could find solace from the narration of misery and woeful change?
This is one of the mysteries of our nature, which holds full sway
over me, and from whose influence I cannot escape. I confess, that
I have not been unmoved by the development of the tale; and that I
have been depressed, nay, agonized, at some parts of the recital,
which I have faithfully transcribed from my materials. Yet such is
human nature, that the excitement of mind was dear to me, and that
the imagination, painter of tempest and earthquake, or, worse, the
stormy and ruin-fraught passions of man, softened my real sorrows
and endless regrets, by clothing these fictitious ones in that
ideality, which takes the mortal sting from pain.
I hardly know whether this apology is necessary. For the
merits of my adaptation and translation must decide how far I have
well bestowed my time and imperfect powers, in giving form and
substance to the frail and attenuated Leaves of the
Sibyl.
I AM the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed
land, which, when the surface of the globe, with its shoreless
ocean and trackless continents, presents itself to my mind, appears
only as an inconsiderable speck in the immense whole; and yet, when
balanced in the scale of mental power, far outweighed countries of
larger extent and more numerous population. So true it is, that
man's mind alone was the creator of all that was good or great to
man, and that Nature herself was only his first minister. England,
seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the
semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which mastered the winds
and rode proudly over the waves. In my boyish days she was the
universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain and
mountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision, speckled by
the dwellings of my countrymen, and subdued to fertility by their
labours, the earth's very centre was fixed for me in that spot, and
the rest of her orb was as a fable, to have forgotten which would
have cost neither my imagination nor understanding an
effort.
My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification
of the power that mutability may possess over the varied tenor of
man's life. With regard to myself, this came almost by inheritance.
My father was one of those men on whom nature had bestowed to
prodigality the envied gifts of wit and imagination, and then left
his bark of life to be impelled by these winds, without adding
reason as the rudder, or judgment as the pilot for the voyage. His
extraction was obscure; but circumstances brought him early into
public notice, and his small paternal property was soon dissipated
in the splendid scene of fashion and luxury in which he was an
actor. During the short years of thoughtless youth, he was adored
by the high-bred triflers of the day, nor least by the youthful
sovereign, who escaped from the intrigues of party, and the arduous
duties of kingly business, to find never-failing amusement and
exhilaration of spirit in his society. My father's impulses, never
under his own controul, perpetually led him into difficulties from
which his ingenuity alone could extricate him; and the accumulating
pile of debts of honour and of trade, which would have bent to
earth any other, was supported by him with a light spirit and
tameless hilarity; while his company was so necessary at the tables
and assemblies of the rich, that his derelictions were considered
venial, and he himself received with intoxicating
flattery.
This kind of popularity, like every other, is evanescent: and
the difficulties of every kind with which he had to contend,
increased in a frightful ratio compared with his small means of
extricating himself. At such times the king, in his enthusiasm for
him, would come to his relief, and then kindly take his friend to
task; my father gave the best promises for amendment, but his
social disposition, his craving for the usual diet of admiration,
and more than all, the fiend of gambling, which fully possessed
him, made his good resolutions transient, his promises vain. With
the quick sensibility peculiar to his temperament, he perceived his
power in the brilliant circle to be on the wane. The king married;
and the haughty princess of Austria, who became, as queen of
England, the head of fashion, looked with harsh eyes on his
defects, and with contempt on the affection her royal husband
entertained for him. My father felt that his fall was near; but so
far from profiting by this last calm before the storm to save
himself, he sought to forget anticipated evil by making still
greater sacrifices to the deity of pleasure, deceitful and cruel
arbiter of his destiny.
The king, who was a man of excellent dispositions, but easily
led, had now become a willing disciple of his imperious consort. He
was induced to look with extreme disapprobation, and at last with
distaste, on my father's imprudence and follies. It is true that
his presence dissipated these clouds; his warm-hearted frankness,
brilliant sallies, and confiding demeanour were irresistible: it
was only when at a distance, while still renewed tales of his
errors were poured into his royal friend's ear, that he lost his
influence. The queen's dextrous management was employed to prolong
these absences, and gather together accusations. At length the king
was brought to see in him a source of perpetual disquiet, knowing
that he should pay for the short-lived pleasure of his society by
tedious homilies, and more painful narrations of excesses, the
truth of which he could not disprove. The result was, that he would
make one more attempt to reclaim him, and in case of ill success,
cast him off for ever.
Such a scene must have been one of deepest interest and
high-wrought passion. A powerful king, conspicuous for a goodness
which had heretofore made him meek, and now lofty in his
admonitions, with alternate entreaty and reproof, besought his
friend to attend to his real interests, resolutely to avoid those
fascinations which in fact were fast deserting him, and to spend
his great powers on a worthy field, in which he, his sovereign,
would be his prop, his stay, and his pioneer. My father felt this
kindness; for a moment ambitious dreams floated before him; and he
thought that it would be well to exchange his present pursuits for
nobler duties. With sincerity and fervour he gave the required
promise: as a pledge of continued favour, he received from his
royal master a sum of money to defray pressing debts, and enable
him to enter under good auspices his new career. That very night,
while yet full of gratitude and good resolves, this whole sum, and
its amount doubled, was lost at the gaming-table. In his desire to
repair his first losses, my father risked double stakes, and thus
incurred a debt of honour he was wholly unable to pay. Ashamed to
apply again to the king, he turned his back upon London, its false
delights and clinging miseries; and, with poverty for his sole
companion, buried himself in solitude among the hills and lakes of
Cumberland. His wit, his bon mots, the record of his personal
attractions, fascinating manners, and social talents, were long
remembered and repeated from mouth to mouth. Ask where now was this
favourite of fashion, this companion of the noble, this excelling
beam, which gilt with alien splendour the assemblies of the courtly
and the gay—you heard that he was under a cloud, a lost man; not
one thought it belonged to him to repay pleasure by real services,
or that his long reign of brilliant wit deserved a pension on
retiring. The king lamented his absence; he loved to repeat his
sayings, relate the adventures they had had together, and exalt his
talents—but here ended his reminiscence.
Meanwhile my father, forgotten, could not forget. He repined
for the loss of what was more necessary to him than air or food—the
excitements of pleasure, the admiration of the noble, the luxurious
and polished living of the great. A nervous fever was the
consequence; during which he was nursed by the daughter of a poor
cottager, under whose roof he lodged. She was lovely, gentle, and,
above all, kind to him; nor can it afford astonishment, that the
late idol of high-bred beauty should, even in a fallen state,
appear a being of an elevated and wondrous nature to the lowly
cottage-girl. The attachment between them led to the ill-fated
marriage, of which I was the offspring. Notwithstanding the
tenderness and sweetness of my mother, her husband still deplored
his degraded state. Unaccustomed to industry, he knew not in what
way to contribute to the support of his increasing family.
Sometimes he thought of applying to the king; pride and shame for a
while withheld him; and, before his necessities became so imperious
as to compel him to some kind of exertion, he died. For one brief
interval before this catastrophe, he looked forward to the future,
and contemplated with anguish the desolate situation in which his
wife and children would be left. His last effort was a letter to
the king, full of touching eloquence, and of occasional flashes of
that brilliant spirit which was an integral part of him. He
bequeathed his widow and orphans to the friendship of his royal
master, and felt satisfied that, by this means, their prosperity
was better assured in his death than in his life. This letter was
enclosed to the care of a nobleman, who, he did not doubt, would
perform the last and inexpensive office of placing it in the king's
own hand.
He died in debt, and his little property was seized
immediately by his creditors. My mother, pennyless and burthened
with two children, waited week after week, and month after month,
in sickening expectation of a reply, which never came. She had no
experience beyond her father's cottage; and the mansion of the lord
of the manor was the chiefest type of grandeur she could conceive.
During my father's life, she had been made familiar with the name
of royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, ill according
with her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him who
gave substance and reality to them, vague and fantastical. If,
under any circumstances, she could have acquired sufficient courage
to address the noble persons mentioned by her husband, the ill
success of his own application caused her to banish the idea. She
saw therefore no escape from dire penury: perpetual care, joined to
sorrow for the loss of the wondrous being, whom she continued to
contemplate with ardent admiration, hard labour, and naturally
delicate health, at length released her from the sad continuity of
want and misery.
The condition of her orphan children was peculiarly desolate.
Her own father had been an emigrant from another part of the
country, and had died long since: they had no one relation to take
them by the hand; they were outcasts, paupers, unfriended beings,
to whom the most scanty pittance was a matter of favour, and who
were treated merely as children of peasants, yet poorer than the
poorest, who, dying, had left them, a thankless bequest, to the
close-handed charity of the land.
I, the elder of the two, was five years old when my mother
died. A remembrance of the discourses of my parents, and the
communications which my mother endeavoured to impress upon me
concerning my father's friends, in slight hope that I might one day
derive benefit from the knowledge, floated like an indistinct dream
through my brain. I conceived that I was different and superior to
my protectors and companions, but I knew not how or wherefore. The
sense of injury, associated with the name of king and noble, clung
to me; but I could draw no conclusions from such feelings, to serve
as a guide to action. My first real knowledge of myself was as an
unprotected orphan among the valleys and fells of Cumberland. I was
in the service of a farmer; and with crook in hand, my dog at my
side, I shepherded a numerous flock on the near uplands. I cannot
say much in praise of such a life; and its pains far exceeded its
pleasures. There was freedom in it, a companionship with nature,
and a reckless loneliness; but these, romantic as they were, did
not accord with the love of action and desire of human sympathy,
characteristic of youth. Neither the care of my flock, nor the
change of seasons, were sufficient to tame my eager spirit; my
out-door life and unemployed time were the temptations that led me
early into lawless habits. I associated with others friendless like
myself; I formed them into a band, I was their chief and captain.
All shepherd-boys alike, while our flocks were spread over the
pastures, we schemed and executed many a mischievous prank, which
drew on us the anger and revenge of the rustics. I was the leader
and protector of my comrades, and as I became distinguished among
them, their misdeeds were usually visited upon me. But while I
endured punishment and pain in their defence with the spirit of an
hero, I claimed as my reward their praise and
obedience.
In such a school my disposition became rugged, but firm. The
appetite for admiration and small capacity for self-controul which
I inherited from my father, nursed by adversity, made me daring and
reckless. I was rough as the elements, and unlearned as the animals
I tended. I often compared myself to them, and finding that my
chief superiority consisted in power, I soon persuaded myself that
it was in power only that I was inferior to the chiefest potentates
of the earth. Thus untaught in refined philosophy, and pursued by a
restless feeling of degradation from my true station in society, I
wandered among the hills of civilized England as uncouth a savage
as the wolf-bred founder of old Rome. I owned but one law, it was
that of the strongest, and my greatest deed of virtue was never to
submit.
Yet let me a little retract from this sentence I have passed
on myself. My mother, when dying, had, in addition to her other
half-forgotten and misapplied lessons, committed, with solemn
exhortation, her other child to my fraternal guardianship; and this
one duty I performed to the best of my ability, with all the zeal
and affection of which my nature was capable. My sister was three
years younger than myself; I had nursed her as an infant, and when
the difference of our sexes, by giving us various occupations, in a
great measure divided us, yet she continued to be the object of my
careful love. Orphans, in the fullest sense of the term, we were
poorest among the poor, and despised among the unhonoured. If my
daring and courage obtained for me a kind of respectful aversion,
her youth and sex, since they did not excite tenderness, by proving
her to be weak, were the causes of numberless mortifications to
her; and her own disposition was not so constituted as to diminish
the evil effects of her lowly station.
She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much of the
peculiar disposition of our father. Her countenance was all
expression; her eyes were not dark, but impenetrably deep; you
seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance,
and to feel that the soul which was their soul, comprehended an
universe of thought in its ken. She was pale and fair, and her
golden hair clustered on her temples, contrasting its rich hue with
the living marble beneath. Her coarse peasant-dress, little
consonant apparently with the refinement of feeling which her face
expressed, yet in a strange manner accorded with it. She was like
one of Guido's saints, with heaven in her heart and in her look, so
that when you saw her you only thought of that within, and costume
and even feature were secondary to the mind that beamed in her
countenance.
Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor Perdita
(for this was the fanciful name my sister had received from her
dying parent), was not altogether saintly in her disposition. Her
manners were cold and repulsive. If she had been nurtured by those
who had regarded her with affection, she might have been different;
but unloved and neglected, she repaid want of kindness with
distrust and silence. She was submissive to those who held
authority over her, but a perpetual cloud dwelt on her brow; she
looked as if she expected enmity from every one who approached her,
and her actions were instigated by the same feeling. All the time
she could command she spent in solitude. She would ramble to the
most unfrequented places, and scale dangerous heights, that in
those unvisited spots she might wrap herself in loneliness. Often
she passed whole hours walking up and down the paths of the woods;
she wove garlands of flowers and ivy, or watched the flickering of
the shadows and glancing of the leaves; sometimes she sat beside a
stream, and as her thoughts paused, threw flowers or pebbles into
the waters, watching how those swam and these sank; or she would
set afloat boats formed of bark of trees or leaves, with a feather
for a sail, and intensely watch the navigation of her craft among
the rapids and shallows of the brook. Meanwhile her active fancy
wove a thousand combinations; she dreamt "of moving accidents by
flood and field"—she lost herself delightedly in these self-created
wanderings, and returned with unwilling spirit to the dull detail
of common life. Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies,
and all that was good in her seemed about to perish from want of
the genial dew of affection. She had not even the same advantage as
I in the recollection of her parents; she clung to me, her brother,
as her only friend, but her alliance with me completed the distaste
that her protectors felt for her; and every error was magnified by
them into crimes. If she had been bred in that sphere of life to
which by inheritance the delicate framework of her mind and person
was adapted, she would have been the object almost of adoration,
for her virtues were as eminent as her defects. All the genius that
ennobled the blood of her father illustrated hers; a generous tide
flowed in her veins; artifice, envy, or meanness, were at the
antipodes of her nature; her countenance, when enlightened by
amiable feeling, might have belonged to a queen of nations; her
eyes were bright; her look fearless.
Although by our situation and dispositions we were almost
equally cut off from the usual forms of social intercourse, we
formed a strong contrast to each other. I always required the
stimulants of companionship and applause. Perdita was
all-sufficient to herself. Notwithstanding my lawless habits, my
disposition was sociable, hers recluse. My life was spent among
tangible realities, hers was a dream. I might be said even to love
my enemies, since by exciting me they in a sort bestowed happiness
upon me; Perdita almost disliked her friends, for they interfered
with her visionary moods. All my feelings, even of exultation and
triumph, were changed to bitterness, if unparticipated; Perdita,
even in joy, fled to loneliness, and could go on from day to day,
neither expressing her emotions, nor seeking a fellow-feeling in
another mind. Nay, she could love and dwell with tenderness on the
look and voice of her friend, while her demeanour expressed the
coldest reserve. A sensation with her became a sentiment, and she
never spoke until she had mingled her perceptions of outward
objects with others which were the native growth of her own mind.
She was like a fruitful soil that imbibed the airs and dews of
heaven, and gave them forth again to light in loveliest forms of
fruits and flowers; but then she was often dark and rugged as that
soil, raked up, and new sown with unseen seed.
She dwelt in a cottage whose trim grass-plat sloped down to
the waters of the lake of Ulswater; a beech wood stretched up the
hill behind, and a purling brook gently falling from the acclivity
ran through poplar-shaded banks into the lake. I lived with a
farmer whose house was built higher up among the hills: a dark crag
rose behind it, and, exposed to the north, the snow lay in its
crevices the summer through. Before dawn I led my flock to the
sheep-walks, and guarded them through the day. It was a life of
toil; for rain and cold were more frequent than sunshine; but it
was my pride to contemn the elements. My trusty dog watched the
sheep as I slipped away to the rendezvous of my comrades, and
thence to the accomplishment of our schemes. At noon we met again,
and we threw away in contempt our peasant fare, as we built our
fire-place and kindled the cheering blaze destined to cook the game
stolen from the neighbouring preserves. Then came the tale of
hair-breadth escapes, combats with dogs, ambush and flight, as
gipsey-like we encompassed our pot. The search after a stray lamb,
or the devices by which we elude or endeavoured to elude
punishment, filled up the hours of afternoon; in the evening my
flock went to its fold, and I to my sister.
It was seldom indeed that we escaped, to use an old-fashioned
phrase, scot free. Our dainty fare was often exchanged for blows
and imprisonment. Once, when thirteen years of age, I was sent for
a month to the county jail. I came out, my morals unimproved, my
hatred to my oppressors encreased tenfold. Bread and water did not
tame my blood, nor solitary confinement inspire me with gentle
thoughts. I was angry, impatient, miserable; my only happy hours
were those during which I devised schemes of revenge; these were
perfected in my forced solitude, so that during the whole of the
following season, and I was freed early in September, I never
failed to provide excellent and plenteous fare for myself and my
comrades. This was a glorious winter. The sharp frost and heavy
snows tamed the animals, and kept the country gentlemen by their
firesides; we got more game than we could eat, and my faithful dog
grew sleek upon our refuse.
Thus years passed on; and years only added fresh love of
freedom, and contempt for all that was not as wild and rude as
myself. At the age of sixteen I had shot up in appearance to man's
estate; I was tall and athletic; I was practised to feats of
strength, and inured to the inclemency of the elements. My skin was
embrowned by the sun; my step was firm with conscious power. I
feared no man, and loved none. In after life I looked back with
wonder to what I then was; how utterly worthless I should have
become if I had pursued my lawless career. My life was like that of
an animal, and my mind was in danger of degenerating into that
which informs brute nature. Until now, my savage habits had done me
no radical mischief; my physical powers had grown up and flourished
under their influence, and my mind, undergoing the same discipline,
was imbued with all the hardy virtues. But now my boasted
independence was daily instigating me to acts of tyranny, and
freedom was becoming licentiousness. I stood on the brink of
manhood; passions, strong as the trees of a forest, had already
taken root within me, and were about to shadow with their noxious
overgrowth, my path of life.
I panted for enterprises beyond my childish exploits, and
formed distempered dreams of future action. I avoided my ancient
comrades, and I soon lost them. They arrived at the age when they
were sent to fulfil their destined situations in life; while I, an
outcast, with none to lead or drive me forward, paused. The old
began to point at me as an example, the young to wonder at me as a
being distinct from themselves; I hated them, and began, last and
worst degradation, to hate myself. I clung to my ferocious habits,
yet half despised them; I continued my war against civilization,
and yet entertained a wish to belong to it.
I revolved again and again all that I remembered my mother to
have told me of my father's former life; I contemplated the few
relics I possessed belonging to him, which spoke of greater
refinement than could be found among the mountain cottages; but
nothing in all this served as a guide to lead me to another and
pleasanter way of life. My father had been connected with nobles,
but all I knew of such connection was subsequent neglect. The name
of the king,—he to whom my dying father had addressed his latest
prayers, and who had barbarously slighted them, was associated only
with the ideas of unkindness, injustice, and consequent resentment.
I was born for something greater than I was—and greater I would
become; but greatness, at least to my distorted perceptions, was no
necessary associate of goodness, and my wild thoughts were
unchecked by moral considerations when they rioted in dreams of
distinction. Thus I stood upon a pinnacle, a sea of evil rolled at
my feet; I was about to precipitate myself into it, and rush like a
torrent over all obstructions to the object of my wishes— when a
stranger influence came over the current of my fortunes, and
changed their boisterous course to what was in comparison like the
gentle meanderings of a meadow-encircling streamlet.