reluctantly and by constraint, slowly and lingeringly dissolving from my sight--like a bright cloud fainting from twilight into darkness. A long illness followed this visitation. During the fever that supervened, I was reunited in a delicious rapture to her who had so mysteriously fascinated me. Alone with her in weird solitudes, I gazed into the deep light of her eyes, fearing to speak lest at the sound of my voice she might again vanish from me. Silence appeared to be understood between us as the condition of our intercourse, so unconsciously did my imagination adapt itself to the spiritual nature of the delusion. At length the fever passed away, but although the body was delivered from the raging fires that had consumed its strength, the mind was still devoured by the same insatiable longing to discover the object of my inextinguishable passion. I was shattered in health and spirits; incapable of much exertion; and harassed by disappointments. I tried to shake off the despair that was rapidly gaining an ascendency over me; but the bleakness and loneliness of my life only helped to encourage it; and I finally resolved to leave the country, and seek relief and oblivion in new scenes and excitements. And so I forsook the old mansion with a heavy heart, and directed my course to London. V. It was my first experiment in the world. I had no friends or acquaintances in the great metropolis. I was a stranger in its thronged thoroughfares, which are more desolate to a stranger than a howling wilderness. At first I was distracted out of myself by the whirl of the vortex in which I found myself engulfed. The eternal din, the countless multitudes, the occupation that was legibly written in every man's face, gave me something to think of, and forced me into a sort of blind activity. But the novelty of this uproar and bustle, in which my own sympathies or interests were in no way engaged, soon palled upon me, and threw me back upon the morbid humors which the sudden change had only temporarily lulled. I panted again for quiet, and sought it in the depth of the town.