But Soon, I Shall Die, And What

The Day Of My Departure At Length Arrived. Clerval Spent The Last Evening With Us. He Had Endeavoured To Persuade His Father To Permit Him To Accompany Me And To Become My Fellow Student, But In Vain. His Father Was A Narrow-minded Trader, And Saw Idleness And Ruin In The Aspirations And Ambition Of His Son. Henry Deeply Felt The Misfortune Of Being Debarred From A Liberal Education. He Said Little, But When He Spoke I Read In His Kindling Eye And In His Animated Glance A Restrained But Firm Resolve Not To Be Chained To The Miserable Details Of Commerce.

I Feel Exquisite Pleasure In Dwelling On The Recollections Of Childhood, Before Misfortune Had Tainted My Mind, And Changed Its Bright Visions Of Extensive Usefulness Into Gloomy And Narrow Reflections Upon Self.

The Moon Gazed On My Midnight Labours, While, With Unrelaxed And Breathless Eagerness, I Pursued Nature To Her Hiding Places.

There Is Something At Work In My Soul Which I Do Not Understand. I Am Practically Industrious - Painstaking, A Workman To Execute With Perseverance And Labour - But Besides This There Is A Love For The Marvellous, A Belief In The Marvellous, Intertwined In All My Projects, Which Hurries Me Out Of The Common Pathways Of Men, Even To The Wild Sea And Unvisited Regions I Am About To Explore.

What Are We, The Inhabitants Of This Globe, Least Among The Many That People Infinite Space? Our Minds Embrace Infinity; The Visible Mechanism Of Our Being Is Subject To Merest Accident.