"October 17, 1820.--With this day's journal ends the third year that I have kept it. This year has been the most interesting and varied I have ever passed, and probably ever shall, for my travelling will not last long. I certainly have reaped advantages in some respects, and great ones. I have had experience in the world, and have learnt to shift for myself better than I could have done by any other means. I have, I hope, increased the confidence of my family in me; and, above all, I have nearly expelled that melancholy disposition I gained at college; but most active I feel I must be to prevent its return when I again remain quiet in England. I have still a damper to my prospects that occasionally overwhelms me, but I must, I trust, get over that too; as I have now persuaded myself on sober reflection, though I am sadly slow in beginning to act on the principle, that one quality alone is within all our reach, and that one object alone is worth trying for. God grant this thought may often occur to me. I have this year enjoyed the pleasures and diversions most enlivening, and which I always most desired; but even they are insufficient to make {90} one happy alone, though nearer to it than any others. Let us then look to what certainly can." This train of thought seemed to have occupied his mind between his leaving Paris, and returning to it again during the last visit to his sister. There is one paragraph in the Autobiography which refers to both; here it is, and it is the last morsel of that interesting document that remains unwritten in his life:--