IN CONTINUATION.
It is two days since I began this letter, yet I am still here; I have not power to move, though I know not what secret spell detains me. But whither shall I go, and to what purpose? the tie which once bound me to physical and moral good, to virtue and felicity, is broken, for ever broken. My mind is changed, dreadfully changed within these few days. I am ill too, a burning fever preys upon the very springs of life; all around me is solitary and desolate. Sometimes my brain seems on fire, and hideous phantoms float before my eyes; either my senses are disordered by indisposition, or the hand of heaven presses heavily on me. My blood rolls in torrents through my veins. Sometimes I think it should, it must have vent. I feel it is in vain to think that I shall ever be fit for the discharge of any duty in this life. I shall hold a place in the creation to which I am a dishonour. I shall become a burthen to the few who are obliged to feel an interest in my welfare.
It is the duty of every one to do that which his situation requires, to act up to the measure of judgment bestowed on him by Providence. Should I continue to drag on this load of life, it would be for its wretched remnant a mere animal existence. A moral death! What! I become again like the plant I tread under my feet; endued with a vegetative existence, but destitute of all sensation of all feeling. I who have tasted heaven’s own bliss; who have known, oh God! that even the recollection, the simple recollection should diffuse through my chilled heart, through my whole languid frame such cheering renovating ardour.
I have gone over calmly, deliberately gone over every circumstance connected with the recent dream of my life. It is evident that the object of my heart’s first election is that of her father’s choice. Her passion for me, for I swear most solemnly she loved me: Oh, in that I could not be deceived; every look, every word betrayed it; her passion for me was a paroxysm. Her tender, her impassioned nature required some object to receive the glowing ebullitions of its affectionate feelings; and in the absence of another, in that unrestrained intimacy by which we were so closely associated; in that sympathy of pursuit which existed between us, they were lavished on me. I was the substituted toy of the moment. And shall I then sink beneath a woman’s whim, a woman’s infidelity, unfaithful to another as to me? I who, from my early days, have suffered by her arts and my own credulity? But what were all my sufferings to this? A drop of water to “the multitudinous ocean.” Yet in the moment of a last farewell she wept so bitterly! tears of pity! Pitied and deceived!
I am resolved I will offer myself an expiatory sacrifice on the altar of parental wrongs. The father whom I have deceived and injured shall be retributed. This moment I have received a letter from him, the most affectionate and tender; he is arrived in Dublin, and with him Mr. D———, and his daughter! It is well! If he requires it the moment of our meeting shall be that of my immolation. Some act of desperation would be now most consonant to my soul!
Adieu.