42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 |
1 | 101 | 202 | 302 | 403 |
THE MAN OF THE CROWD.
Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul.
La Bruyère.
IT was well said of a certain German book that "er lasst sich nicht
lesen"--it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets
which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their
beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors and looking them
piteously in the eyes--die with despair of heart and convulsion of
throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer
themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man
takes up a burthen so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only
into the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged.
Not long ago, about the closing in of an evening in autumn, I sat at the
large bow window of the D----- Coffee-House in London. For some months
I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with returning
strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so
precisely the converse of ennui--moods of the keenest appetency, when
the film from the mental vision departs--the [Greek phrase]--and the
intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its every-day condition,
as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy
rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived
positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I
4
4
Page
Quick Jump
|