How Mutable Are Our Feelings, And How

Satan Has His Companions, Fellow-devils, To Admire And Encourage Him; But I Am Solitary And Detested.

Our Feelings Probably Are Not Less Strong At Fifty Than They Were Ten Or Fifteen Years Before; But They Have Changed Their Objects, And Dwell On Far Different Prospects. At Five-and-thirty A Man Thinks Of What His Own Existence Is; When The Maturity Of Age Has Grown Into Its Autumn, He Is Wrapt Up In That Of Others. The Loss Of Wife Or Child Then Becomes More Deplorable, As Being Impossible To Repair; For No Fresh Connection Can Give Us Back The Companion Of Our Earlier Years, Nor A "new-sprung Race" Compensate For That, Whose Career We Hoped To See Run.

If You Will Comply With My Conditions, I Will Leave Them And You At Peace; But If You Refuse, I Will Glut The Maw Of Death, Until It Be Satiated With The Blood Of Your Remaining Friends.

I Felt Emotions Of Gentleness And Pleasure, That Had Long Appeared Dead, Revive Within Me. Half Surprised By The Novelty Of These Sensations, I Allowed Myself To Be Borne Away By Them, And Forgetting My Solitude And Deformity, Dared To Be Happy.

I Saw No Cause For Their Unhappiness, But I Was Deeply Affected By It. If Such Lovely Creatures Were Miserable, It Was Less Strange That I, An Imperfect And Solitary Being, Should Be Wretched.