The Voice of Conscience - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1856 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X. "Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend Towards a higher object. Love was given, Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end; For this the passion to excess was driven, That self might be annulled: her bondage prove The fetters of a dream, opposed to love." Wordsworth. I Now approach another important point in my history--before entering on it, a few remarks must precede. It may seem strange that in this record of my inward life, professing, as I do, to lay open the principal emotions of my soul, and to investigate the springs of thought and action, that I should have yet made no allusion whatever, to one strong tendency, that influences the lives of most men, particularly in their youth, either for good or evil--I mean, of course, the passion of love. The truth is, that up to this period I had never been in love, but with ideal beings. Before the happy change in my views and character, I had been almost consumed by the "besoin (Taimer,"---by the hopeless search after some "fair spirit," on whom I might lavish the pent-up stores of my affections. I looked around on the coarse unpolished beings of flesh and blood by whom I was surrounded; and though sometimes I tried hard to. invest one or two of the most comely of them with the attributes of my imagination, it would not do--some grating Cornicism, or some coarse vulgar remark, would at once dissipate any incipient illusion, and would convince me of the impossibility of even attempting to love any of these. I remember, indeed, when a little boy, during my permitted visits at the "great house," being so presumptuous as to enshrine the eldest Miss Ormsby, a few years my senior, in my heart's sanctuary. She appeared to my young imagination like a magnificent houri, whom it was felicity enough, to see ...