Men adopt a great many different methods to get rid of their respective shadows, approximating more or less to the conclusive plan of Peter Schlemihl aforesaid, who sold his outright to the devil. Some try to lose it amongst a crowd of fellow-creatures, all with the same familiar attendants of their own; others struggle with it in solitude, and find themselves halting and maimed after the conflict, like him who wrestled of old with the angel at Penuel “until the breaking of the day.” One thinks to stifle his tormentor in business, another to lull him with pleasure, a third to drown him in wine. None of these remedies seem to answer the purpose desired. Blue-books, bankers’ books, betting-books are unable to break the spell; over the pages of each he throws the all-pervading gloom. Neither is he to be worsted by the gleam of many candles flashing only less brightly than the sparkle of Beauty’s jewels and the lustre of her soft eyes in “halls of dazzling light.” On the contrary, it is here that, maybe from the force of contrast, he asserts his power with the greatest determination, coming out, as is but natural, under the vivid glare thrown on him in a stronger and more uncompromising relief. To steep him in wine is often but to increase his dimensions out of all reasonable proportions, and at best only gets rid of him for a night that he may return in the morning refreshed and invigorated to vindicate his sovereignty over the enfeebled rebel he controls. There are means of dispelling the darkness, no doubt, but I fear they are not to be found in the resources of study, certainly not in the distractions of dissipation nor the feverish delirium of vice. It must be a warm, genial, and unusually generous disposition which is not warped and dwarfed by a shadow cast upon it in youth, or indeed at any period of life; but for animate as for inanimate nature there are black frosts as well as white. The latter evaporate with the morning sun in light wreaths of vapour and perhaps a few tears sparkling like diamonds, to be succeeded by brilliant sunshine, unclouded till the close of its short winter’s day; the former, grim, grey, and lowering, parch and wither up the life of every green thing, drawing her shroud, as it were, over the cold dead face of earth ere she is buried in the darkness of approaching night. It is hard upon youth to see its rosy morning overcast by the shadow; but it has many hours yet to look forward to before noon, and can afford to wait for brighter weather. Far more cruelly does age feel the withdrawal of that light it had trusted in to cheer its declining day; a light it can never hope to welcome again, because long ere the shadow shall be withdrawn from the chilled and weary frame, its sun will have gone down for ever into the ocean of eternity.