Strange and harassing as those trials of my mind were, they had yet contained some appeals to individual energy, some excitement of personal powers, that produced a kind, of cheering self-applause. I was Prometheus on his rock chained and remediless, yet still resisting and unconquered. But the real misery was when I was passive. … I strayed through an Egyptian city. Buildings numberless, of the most regal designs, rose round me; the walls were covered with sculptures of extraordinary richness; noble statues lined the public ways; wealth in the wildest profusion was visible wherever the foot trod. Endless ranges of porphyry and alabaster columns glittered in the noonday sun. Superb ascents of marble steps mounted before me, to heights that strained the eye. Arch over arch studded with the luster of precious stones climbed until they lay like rainbows upon the sky. Colossal towers circling with successive colonnades of dazzling brightness, ascended—airy citadels, looking down upon earth, and colored with the infinite dyes and lusters of the clouds. But all was silence in this scene of pomp. There was no tread of human being heard within the circuit of a city, fit for more than man. The utter extinction of all that gives the idea of life was startling; there was not the note of a passing bird, nor the chirp of a grasshopper. I instinctively shrank from the sight of things lovely in themselves, yet which froze my mind by their image of the tomb. But to escape was impossible; there was an impression of powerlessness upon me, for whose melancholy I can find no words. My feet were chainless, but never fetter clung with such a retarding weight as that invisible bond by which I was fixed to the spot. Ages on ages seemed to have heavily sunk away, and still I stood, bound by the same manacle, standing on the same spot, looking on the same objects. To this I would have preferred the fiercest extremes of suffering. Of all passions that dwell within the heart of man, the passion for change is the most incapable of being extinguished or eluded. [Sidenote: In the Twilight]