ABSTRACT

I quitted the apartment of Lisle, and hastened to shut myself up in my own chamber. ‘At seventeen years,’ says Old Adam in the play, ‘many their fortunes seek.’ a I was arrived at seventeen years; but my fortune was ended and done. I had no place in the world of mankind. I took to myself no accusation of vice or crime; but a sentence of proscription had gone out against me, and could never be revoked. As I rolled these considerations desperately in my mind, I felt myself successively a theatre for sensations before unknown. Lightnings flashed from my eyes. / My head throbbed; my senses became giddy; all was confusion and uproar within me. Involuntarily I uttered loud cries and piercing shrieks. Again, I looked up, and saw the objects around me. Books, placed regularly on shelves, or thrown carelessly, after having been consulted, on the floor, a desk, papers, and the implements of study, with maps orderly arranged against the walls: What have I to do with these? I said. This is no place for me! Instantly I rushed from my chamber; I passed along with winged rapidity; I sallied out at the eastern avenue of the city, and presently plunged myself in the wildest and most savage recesses of the forest of Shotover. I felt ease, in proportion as I withdrew from the haunts of men. ‘Ah’ said I, ‘here I have room to be miserable! Man, that accursed thing, no longer hedges and represses me with the tyranny of his eye; and I am surrounded with Nature’s productions only, not with doors, and / locks, and walls, and streets, the artifices of human ingenuity.’