Crauford was, as we have seen, a man in some respects of great moral courage, of extraordinary daring in the formation of schemes, of unwavering resolution in supporting them, and of a temper which rather rejoiced in, than shunned, the braving of a distant danger for the sake of an adequate reward. But this courage was supported and fed solely by the self-persuasion of consummate genius, and his profound confidence both in his good fortune and the inexhaustibility of his resources. Physically he was a coward! immediate peril to be confronted by the person, not the mind, had ever appalled him like a child. He had never dared to back a spirited horse. He had been known to remain for days in an obscure ale-house in the country, to which a shower had accidentally driven him, because it had been idly reported that a wild beast had escaped from a caravan and been seen in the vicinity of the inn. No dog had ever been allowed in his household lest it might go mad. In a word, Crauford was one to whom life and sensual enjoyments were everything,--the supreme blessings, the only blessings. As long as he had the hope, and it was a sanguine hope, of saving life, nothing had disturbed his mind from its serenity. His gayety had never forsaken him; and his cheerfulness and fortitude had been the theme of every one admitted to his presence. But when this hope was abruptly and finally closed; when Death, immediate and unavoidable,--Death, the extinction of existence, the cessation of sense,--stood bare and hideous before him, his genius seemed at once to abandon him to his fate, and the inherent weakness of his nature to gush over every prop and barrier of his art. No hope!" muttered he, in a voice of the keenest anguish, "no hope; merciful God! none, none? What, I, I, who have shamed kings in luxury,--I to die on the gibbet, among the reeking, gaping, swinish crowd with whom--O God, that I were one of them even! that I were the most loathsome beggar that ever crept forth to taint the air with sores! that I were a toad immured in a stone, sweltering in the atmosphere of its own venom! a snail crawling on these very walls, and tracking his painful path in slime!--anything, anything, but death! And such death! The gallows, the scaffold, the halter, the fingers of the hangman paddling round the neck where the softest caresses have clung and sated. To die, die, die! What, I whose pulse now beats so strongly! whose blood keeps so warm and vigorous a motion! in the very prime of enjoyment and manhood; all life's million paths of pleasure before me,--to die, to swing to the winds, to hang,--ay, ay--to hang! to be cut down, distorted and hideous; to be thrust into the earth with worms; to rot, or--or--or hell! is there a hell?--better that even than annihilation!"