Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.
The idea of seeing the sea – of being near it – watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noonday – in calm, perhaps in storm – fills and satisfies my mind.
I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.
They will both be happy, and I do not grudge them their bliss; but I groan under my own misery: some of my suffering is very acute. Truly, I ought not to have been born: they should have smothered me at first cry.
I have for the first time found what I can truly love- I have found you. You are my sympathy-my better self-my good angel-I am bound to you with a strong attachment.
Too often do reviewers remind us of the mob of Astrologers, Chaldeans, and Soothsayers gathered before ‘the writing on the wall’ and unable to read the characters or make known the interpretation.
After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you.
