I KNOW, I feel, that your kindness would willingly spare me, if it could. I know that you would fain have me preserve secrets, dark, for the most part, as those of death and the grave, even from you. At this moment, however, it so happens, that nothing can give me any additional uneasiness.

Here am I sitting in my own comfortable easy-chair, in my own snug library;—a bright fire is blazing at my side;—everything is light and warmth about me. Old I am, yet I feel strength in every fibre. My perceptions are as clear as ever they were in the morning of my days. I can walk, ride, read or write, as nimbly as if I were a man of five and twenty years. I drink no wine when by myself; but a bottle of water stands near me on the table. Here, sir, I drink your health.—I have drained my glass to the bottom.

And yet, it is I that can look back upon that wilderness of horrors! These are the very limbs that were bound and chained in yon dreary cell;—these are the very eyes that used to watch and curse that one dim straggling day-beam, descending from an immeasurable height above me upon those dark slimy stones;—this is the frame that cowered and shivered in yon corner. It was I that raved up and down that dungeon like a new-caught lion;—it was I that bellowed to the moon;—it was I that coiled myself up like a trampled worm, whenever yonder low iron grating was opened, and the hard-faced barbarian stood, whip in hand, before me.

What grovelling fears—what icy sweats—what terrible dreams—more terrible even than the waking terrors of madness! What a thirst, and yet what a dread, for the approach of sleep—what dead blanks of total oblivion—what agonies of remembrance—what furious rushing again into the out-stretched arms of ever-watchful Despair!