Priscilla, not daring to resist, finally persuaded her husband to consent to return home. We crossed the Channel to England, and hastened to embark at Liverpool on board a steamer for New York. We had a stormy passage, and came near being cast away; but at length arrived in port, and soon found ourselves in Philadelphia, after an absence of six years and six months amidst scenes and events of the most exciting character. We were all changed in looks, but still more in feelings. The fire of our enthusiasm was extinct, the freshness and sanguine hopes of youth had fled forever; our labor had been in vain, and there was no bright or cheering prospect before us. I took my leave of Priscilla at the public-house where we stopped. When I saw her faded cheek, her sunken eye and withered form, the wrinkles gathering on her brow, and heard her, in a broken voice, renew her oft-repeated request, and remembered what she was some ten or twelve years before, and thought of what I was too at that time, and what I was now, I had a touch of human feeling, and pressing her hand to my lips—I had not the heart to refuse—I told her I would consider it, perhaps I would, and hurried out of the room, to conceal my emotion, not sorry, after all, to find that I had not wholly ceased to be human. The next day, I started for my home in Western New York. Home, alas! no longer. The house was desolate. During my prolonged absence, my mother and my only sister had died, and all my family were gone. My library and my laboratory remained as I had left them. They had no charms for me now. I looked out upon the familiar scenes of my childhood; they seemed changed all, and were tame and listless. I met some companions of my earlier life; there was nothing in common between them and me. Their voices sounded strange, and grated on my ears. The sad conviction, for the first time in my life, forced itself upon me, that I was alone, and deeply I felt my loneness. I had lost my childhood’s faith, which, though meagre and but a shadow, yet was something. I had no Father in heaven, no brother or sister on earth. I believed in neither angel nor spirit. All existence, all being, had dwindled into one invisible, elemental, impersonal Force, which indeed I could wield, but to what end?