This letter, which even a few days back would have driven me to distraction, I now read with the apathy of a stoic. It is to me a matter of indifference how I am disposed of. I have no wish, no will of my own. To the return of that mortal torpor from which a late fatally cherished sentiment had roused me, is now added the pang of my life’s severest disappointment, like the dying wretch who is only roused from total insensibility, by the quivering pains which, at intervals of fluttering life, shoot through his languid frame. IN CONTINUATION. It is two days since I began this letter, yet I am still here; I have not power to move, though I know not what secret spell detains me. But whither shall I go, and to what purpose? the tie which once bound me to physical and moral good, to virtue and felicity, is broken, for ever broken. My mind is changed, dreadfully changed within these few days. I am ill too, a burning fever preys upon the very springs of life; all around me is solitary and desolate. Sometimes my brain seems on fire, and hideous phantoms float before my eyes; either my senses are disordered by indisposition, or the hand of heaven presses heavily on me. My blood rolls in torrents through my veins. Sometimes I think it _should_, it _must_ have vent. I feel it is in vain to think that I shall ever be fit for the discharge of any duty in this life. I shall hold a place in the creation to which I am a dishonour. I shall become a burthen to the few who are obliged to feel an interest in my welfare. It is the duty of every one to do that which his situation requires, to act up to the measure of judgment bestowed on him by Providence. Should I continue to drag on this load of life, it would be for its wretched remnant a mere animal existence. A moral death! What! I become again like the plant I tread under my feet; endued with a vegetative existence, but destitute of all sensation of all feeling. I who have tasted heaven’s own bliss; who have known, oh God! that even the recollection, the simple recollection should diffuse through my chilled heart, through my whole languid frame such cheering renovating ardour.