"But I disdained all these considerations—they occurred but faintly and ineffectually to my mind. Piety, conscience, and moral respect yielded before a feeling which decked its desires in the garb of necessity. Oh, how vain it is to analyze motive! Each man has the same motives; but it is the materials of each mind—the plastic or rocky nature, the mild or the burning temperament—that rejects the alien influence, or receives it into its own essence and causes the act. Such an impulse is as a summer healthy breeze just dimpling a still lake to one—while to another it is the whirlwind that rouses him to spread ruin around.
"The Almighty who framed my miserable being made me a man of passion. They say that of such are formed the great and good. I know not that—I am neither; but I will not arraign the Creator. I will hope that in feeling my guilt—in acknowledging the superexcellence of virtue, I fulfil, in part, his design. After me, let no man doubt but that to do what is right is to ensure his own happiness; or that self-restraint, and submission to the voice of conscience implanted in our souls, impart more dignity of feeling, more true majesty of being, than a puerile assertion of will and a senseless disregard of immutable principles.
"Is passion known in these days? Such as I felt, has any other experienced it? The expression has fled from our lips; but it is as deep-seated as ever in our hearts. Who, of created beings, has not loved? Who, of my sex, has not felt the struggle, and the yielding in the struggle, of the better to the worse parts of our nature? Who so dead to nature's influence as not, at least for some brief moments, to have felt that body and soul were a slight sacrifice to obtain possession of the affections of her he loved? Who, for some moments in his life, would not have seen his mistress dead at his feet rather than wedded to another? To feel this tyranny of passion is to be human; to conquer it is to be virtuous. He who conquers himself is, in my eyes, the only true hero. Alas, I am not such! I am among the vanquished, and view the wretch I am, and learn that there is nothing so contemptible, so pitiable, so eternally miserable, as he who is defeated in his conflict with passion.
"That I am such, this very scene—this very occupation testifies. Once the slave of headlong impulse, I am now the victim of remorse. I am come to seek death, because I cannot retrieve the past; I long for the moment when the bullet shall pierce my flesh, and the pains of dissolution gather round me. Then I may hope to be, that for which I thirst, free! There is one who loves me. She is pure and kind as a guardian angel—she is as my own child—she implores me to live. With her my days might pass in a peace and innocence that saints might envy; but so heavy are the fetters of memory, so bitter the slavery of my soul, that even she cannot take away the sting from life.
"Death is all I covet. When these pages are read, the hand that traces them will be powerless—the brain that dictates will have lost its functions. This is my last labour—my legacy to my fellow-beings. Do not let them disdain the outpourings of a heart which for years has buried its recollections and remorse in silence. The waters were pent up by a dam—now they rush impetuously forth—they roar as if pursued by a thousand torrents—their turmoil deafens heaven; and what though their sound be only conveyed by the little implement that traces these lines—not less headlong than the swelling waves is the spirit that pours itself out in these words.
"I am calmer now—I have been wandering beside the stream—and, despite the lurking foe and deceptive moonbeams, I have ascended the steep mountain's side—and looked out on the misty sea, and sought to gain from reposing nature some relief to my sense of pain. The hour of midnight is at hand—all is still—I am calm, and with deliberation begin to narrate that train of circumstances, or rather of feelings, that hurried me first to error, then to crime, and, lastly, brought me here to die.
"I lost my mother before I can well remember. I have a confused recollection of her crying—and of her caressing me—and I can call to mind seeing her ill in bed, and her blessing me; but these ideas are rather like revelations of an ante-natal life, than belonging to reality. She died when I was four years old. My childhood's years were stormy and drear. My father, a social, and, I believe, even a polite man in society, was rough and ill-tempered at home. He had gambled away his own slender younger brother's fortune and his wife's portion, and was too idle to attend to a profession, and yet not indolent enough for a life devoid of purpose and pursuit. Our family was a good one; it consisted of two brothers, my father, and my uncle. This latter, favoured of birth and fortune, remained long unmarried; and was in weak health. My father expected him to die. His death, and his own consequent inheritance of the family estate, was his constant theme; but the delayed hope irritated him to madness. I knew his humour even as a child, and escaped it as I could. His voice, calling my name, made my blood run cold; his epithets of abuse, so frequently applied, filled me with boiling but ineffectual rage.
"I am not going to dwell on those painful days when, a weak, tiny boy, I felt as if I could contend with the paternal giant; and did contend, till his hand felled me to the ground, or cast me from his threshold with scorn and seeming hate. I dare say he did not hate me; but certainly no touch of natural love warmed his heart.
"One day he received a letter from his brother—I was but ten years old, but rendered old and careworn by suffering; I remember that I looked on him as he took it and exclaimed, 'From Uncle John! What have we here?' with a nervous tremour as to the passions the perusal of it might excite. He chuckled as he broke the seal—he fancied that he called him to his dying bed—'And that well over, you shall go to school, my fine fellow,' he cried; 'we shall have no more of your tricks at home.' He broke the seal, he read the letter. It announced his brother's marriage, and asked him to the wedding. I let fall the curtain over the scene that ensued: you would have thought that a villanous fraud had been committed, in which I was implicated. He drove me with blows from his door; I foamed with rage, and then I sat down and wept, and crept away to the fields, and wondered why I was born, and longed to kill my uncle, who was the cause to me of so much misery.
"Everything changed for the worse now. Hitherto my father had lived on hope—now he despaired. He took to drinking, which exalted his passions and debased his reason. This at times gave me a superiority over him—when tipsy, I could escape his blows—which yet, when sober, fell on me with double severity. But even the respite I gained through his inebriety afforded me no consolation—I felt at once humbled and indignant at the shame so brought on us. I, child as I was, expostulated with him—I was knocked down, and kicked from the room. Oh, what a world this appeared to me! a war of the weak with the strong—and how I despised everything except victory.