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at Rome. It became necessary, that I should look my disaster in the face--
not playing the school-boy's part of obedience without submission; enduring
life, and yet rebelling against the laws by which I lived.
Yet how could I resign myself? Without love, without sympathy, without
communion with any, how could I meet the morning sun, and with it trace its
oft repeated journey to the evening shades? Why did I continue to live--
why not throw off the weary weight of time, and with my own hand, let out
the fluttering prisoner from my agonized breast?--It was not cowardice
that withheld me; for the true fortitude was to endure; and death had a
soothing sound accompanying it, that would easily entice me to enter its
demesne. But this I would not do. I had, from the moment I had reasoned on
the subject, instituted myself the subject to fate, and the servant of
necessity, the visible laws of the invisible God--I believed that my
obedience was the result of sound reasoning, pure feeling, and an exalted
sense of the true excellence and nobility of my nature. Could I have seen
in this empty earth, in the seasons and their change, the hand of a blind
power only, most willingly would I have placed my head on the sod, and
closed my eyes on its loveliness for ever. But fate had administered life
to me, when the plague had already seized on its prey--she had dragged me
by the hair from out the strangling waves--By such miracles she had
bought me for her own; I admitted her authority, and bowed to her decrees.
If, after mature consideration, such was my resolve, it was doubly
necessary that I should not lose the end of life, the improvement of my
faculties, and poison its flow by repinings without end. Yet how cease to
repine, since there was no hand near to extract the barbed spear that had
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