"Another circumstance I may record to show how free from all religious fear my mind was. I have before noticed {70} the fits of melancholy which became habitual to me during the last part of my Cambridge life. These came, I think, to their greatest height in the last half of the time I spent at Naples. The interesting excitement of our journey, the company of my sister when I first came to Naples, and the gaieties of which I had my fill there, and which at first had all the charm of novelty, kept me from much thought of any kind, and I enjoyed the balls, the concerts, the grand operas, the enchanting rides of Naples, for a month or six weeks, almost without a cloud. At least I used always to count that my brightest period in the way of enjoyments. Unhappy those who have health and spirits and talents to enable them to please and be pleased long together in such a round of vanity! To my great vexation I found myself again attacked with my old enemy, melancholy; do what I would, I could not drive away those fits of gloom. They were caused partly by the effect on my health of too much good living, and bad hours; but the chief cause was the intrinsic worthlessness of all such pleasure, which will discover itself sooner or later to every one even of its most devoted lovers, and which happily showed itself to me sooner than others. Oh! what frivolous causes did my happiness then seem to depend on! Not dancing to my satisfaction in one quadrille, fancying that some of my favourite partners were tired of my conversation, and that the nonsense of some other silly youth pleased her better, was enough to turn what I flattered myself was about to be a bright and pleasant evening into gloom and sadness. Sometimes, without an assignable cause, my spirits failed, as at others an equally frivolous reason would remove my clouds and make me bright again; but gradually the gloomy moods gained ground, and grew more dark and tedious. I remember comparing notes with another young man, who was like me a victim of the dumps, and finding some satisfaction in the sympathy of a fellow-sufferer, who, with a smile at the absurdity of such feelings, of which he was well sensible while he avowed them, exactly described to me my state of mind when he said that under them he fancied himself the most unfortunate of mankind, and would willingly have {71} changed places with the most despicable and wretched of men, not to say with any animal almost. Poor blind fools that we were! We could not between us suggest the way to be happy which is open to all.