"By a sudden glimmer, like the first break of morning, which shot through the gloomy chamber, I there saw my father's spirit close to that of my mother; and both gazed upon me with a compassionate expression, as I stood with the dear deceased in my arms. From that moment I saw and heard no more, I lay deprived of consciousness; and I was found by the servants delirious, and yet powerless as a babe, on the ensuing morning. "The memory of that hour is still as fearfully impressed upon my mind, and I am at a loss to conjecture how I was so unfortunate as to survive it. For it was now, indeed, that this once fair earth, with life, and all that life had to afford, became worse than dead and perished for me;--became a lone waste and wilderness, with all its soft airs, sweet flowers, pure streams, and blue starry skies. I stood like one, the last of a sudden overwhelming wreck, saved only to regret that he had not perished with all that was dearest to him on earth. How I lived on from day to day, I know not; till at last, unable longer to contend with the fiends of remorse that grappled me, I flew to society for relief. I joined a number of dissipated characters, who sought, like me, to lose the sense of their follies and enormities in the most dissolute pleasures. Yes, I sought to propitiate the evil spirit within me by obedience to its worst dictates. My former wildness and impatience revived, and I no longer placed any restraint over my wishes. "I fell into the hands of an abandoned wretch of the name of Rudolf, who only laughed at my lamentations and remorse. More than a year thus elapsed; my anxiety and horror, in spite of all efforts to control them, daily gaining ground upon me, until I was seized with utter despair. Like all who experience that stage of such a malady, I took to wandering without any object. I arrived at distant and unknown places--spots unvisited by other feet; and often I could have thrown myself from some airy height into the green sunny meads and vales below, or rushed into the cool streams to quench my soul's fiery and insatiable thirst; yet though I had no fear, something unaccountable always restrained me. I made many attempts towards the close of the day; for I longed to be annihilated: but when the morning returned, with its golden beams, its fresh dews, and odorous flowers, I felt I could destroy nothing; and hope and love of life revived within my breast. A conviction then seized me, that all hell was conspired together to work my utter perdition; that both my pleasures and my pains arose from the same fiendish source; and that a malicious spirit was gradually directing all the powers and influences of my mind to that sole end. I yielded myself up to him, in order to dissipate these alternating raptures and agonies. On one dark and stormy night I went into the mountains; I mounted one of their highest and giddiest peaks, where foot of man never before trod; and there, with my whole strength