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MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE
Qui n'a plus qu'un moment a vivre
N'a plus rien a dissimuler.
--Quinault--Atys.
OF my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage and
length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from the
other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order,
and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the stores
which early study very diligently garnered up.--Beyond all things,
the study of the German moralists gave me great delight; not from any
ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with
which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities.
I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency
of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism
of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong
relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with
a very common error of this age--I mean the habit of referring
occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the
principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less
liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by
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