“I do not deceive you. I did not feel what men call remorse! Having once convinced myself that I had removed from the earth a thing that injured and soiled its tribes,--that I had in crushing one worthless life, but without crushing one virtue--one feeling--one thought that could benefit others, strode to a glorious end;--having once convinced myself of this, I was not weak enough to feel a vague remorse for a deed I would not allow, in my case, to be a crime. I did not feel remorse, but I felt regret. The thought that had I waited three days I might have been saved, not from guilt, but from the chance of shame,--from the degradation of sinking to Houseman’s equal--of feeling that man had the power to hurt me--that I was no longer above the reach of human malice, or human curiosity--that I was made a slave to my own secret--that I was no longer lord of my heart, to shew or to conceal it--that at any hour, in the possession of honours, by the hearth of love, I might be dragged forth and proclaimed a murderer--that I held my life, my reputation, at the breath of accident--that in the moment I least dreamed of, the earth might yield its dead, and the gibbet demand its victim;--this could I feel--all this--and not make a spectre of the past:--a spectre that walked by my side--that slept at my bed--that rose from my books--that glided between me and the stars of heaven, that stole along the flowers, and withered their sweet breath--that whispered in my ear, ‘Toil, fool, and be wise; the gift of wisdom is to place us above the reach of fortune, but thou art her veriest minion!’ Yes; I paused at last from my wanderings, and surrounded myself with books, and knowledge became once more to me what it had been, a thirst; but not what it had been, a reward. I occupied my thoughts--I laid up new hoards within my mind--I looked around, and I saw few whose stores were like my own,--but where, with the passion for wisdom still alive within me--where was that once more ardent desire which had cheated me across so dark a chasm between youth and manhood--between past and present life--the desire of applying that wisdom to the service of mankind? Gone--dead--buried for ever in my bosom, with the thousand dreams that had perished before it! When the deed was done, mankind seemed suddenly to have grown my foes. I looked upon them with other eyes. I knew that I carried within, that secret which, if bared to-day, would make them loath and hate me,--yea, though I coined my future life into one series of benefits on them and their posterity! Was not this thought enough to quell my ardour--to chill activity into rest? The more I might toil, the brighter honours I might win--the greater services I might bestow on the world, the more dread and fearful might be my fall at last! I might be but piling up the scaffold from which I was to be hurled! Possessed by these thoughts, a new view of human affairs succeeded to my old aspirings;--the moment a