had a morbid sense of the responsibility of bringing up a boy.  She believed my way to manhood was beset by innumerable temptations, almost impossible to escape, difficult to be resisted, and absolutely ruinous to my soul, if yielded to.  She preached to me incessantly.  She kept me from the society of boys of my own age, for fear I should be contaminated,—­and from the approach of any of the other sex, lest my mind should be diverted from serious matters and led into wantonness and folly.  She would have made a priest of me, had it not been for my father;—­he objected.  His brother, for whom I was named, was a distinguished professor, to whom I bore, as he thought, a close resemblance, and he desired I should imitate him in my pursuits.  I had good abilities, and was neither inefficient nor wanting in resolution or industry.  At first I longed for natural life and society; but by degrees habit helped me to endure, and finally to conquer.  In fact, I was taught that I was doing God service in cultivating an ascetic life.  My studies were pursued with success.  I rapidly mastered what was placed before me, and my relations were proud of my progress.  At the usual period the ordinary craving for female society became strong in me.  My mother took great pains to impress on me that here commenced my first struggle with Satan, and, if I yielded, I should certainly and beyond all peradventure become a child of the Devil.  I was in a degree conscientious.  I was ambitious to attain to a holy life.  I believed what my mother had from my infancy labored so hard to inculcate, and I trod out with an iron step every fresh rising emotion of my heart, every genuine passion of my nature.  But I suffered much.  The imagination could not always be subdued, and there were periods when.  I felt that the “strong man armed” had possession of me.  Nevertheless his time was not come, and at length the struggle was over.  It was not that I had gained a laudable control of myself; but, having crucified every rebellious thought, there was nothing left for control.  I had marked my victory by extermination.  To live was no joy; neither was it specially the reverse:  a long, monotonous, changeless platitude; yet no desire to quit the terrible uniformity.

I was forty years old.  I had obtained my purpose.  I was a learned professor.  As I gained in acquirements and reputation, I became more and more laborious.  My health, which had become quite firm, began to yield under incessant application.  I was advised, indeed commanded, by my physician to take repose and recreation.  I came here among the Alps.  I stopped at this very house.  The season was fine, the inns were filled with tourists, and great glee and hilarity prevailed.  It was not without its effect on me.  By slow degrees, with returning health, the pulses of life beat with what seemed an unnatural excitement.  The world, as I opened my eyes on it from the window of the inn, was for the first time not without its attractions.  I quieted myself with the idea, that, once back with my books, my thoughts would flow in the regular channel; and I called to mind something the physician had said about the necessity of my being amused, and so forth, to quiet my conscience, which began to reproach me for enjoying the small ray of sunlight which shone in on my spirit.