What a novelty, methought! How enviable and extraordinary!--For, I had partaken of these pleasures without a particle of enjoyment. Frequenting the resorts of dissipation from custom, labouring to compel my revolting senses to the gratifications of pleasure, struggling to wear a character opposite to my inclination, seeking in public to seduce the attentions of women, from whose hours of private yielding I fled with disgust, effectually removed from society which would have taught me the importance of mental pursuits, and living in the profusion of splendor, I almost prayed for wants, for a something, any thing, that could interrupt the routine of sameness, that could make me cease to be as it were the mere automaton of habit. You charmed me. I longed to investigate the source of your never-failing satisfactions. You did not inform my understanding, but you greatly interested my curiosity. My uncle talked of my making the grand tour; and that was your destiny likewise. It must be amusing, thought I, to travel with one so volatile yet energetic; and such an arrangement was speedily resolved on. We travelled. Sometimes you complained of my indifference, of the cold reserve that hung upon my character; but the avidity with which you perpetually hunted after variety, and the readiness wherewith I listened to your descriptions, reconciled you to whatever discordance you chanced to perceive between my feelings and your own.--Am I not right, Clement? Was not this rather intimacy than friendship? While we viewed the Alps and Pyrenees, their sublimity poured into my mind a flood of enthusiasm. The laughing (as the French emphatically call it) country of Italy filled me with delight. But memory can often present such scenes with the warmth and vigour they first bestow; and even her attempts were repressed by the multitudes of follies that perpetually assailed us. I saw on every hand oppression, priestcraft, and blindness. Neither my tutor nor my companions were capable of stimulating me to inquire into the moral and physical causes of the evils I lamented; and, perceiving only the effect, I concluded they were without remedy, and dismissed the subject. To one point, then, I chained my expectations; and that one point was love. And here, I quixoted my fancy into the wildest hopes. I wanted beauty without vanity, talent without ostentation, delicacy without timidity, and courage without boast. If I saw the semblance of any of these qualities, I hastened to search for the rest. Disappointment succeeded disappointment, without producing any other effect than to bring the visions of my brain before me with fresh allurements, with increase of attributes.