arm can inflict. I was defeated; I was conqueror by turns. By practice my skill became more useful to its master, more formidable to the adversary. Oh such occa sions I delighted in the sight of blood. Whether it flowed from the person of my competitor or from my own, in the one case no less than the other, it seemed to lighten and dilute the impure and substantial fluid that weighed on my heart. I gained some, but an imperfect relief to the injustice I felt. Few things in the scholastic circle' obtain for their possessor more respect, than' courage and power evinced in this species of contention. My equals became more cautious in provoking me to this retalia tion. Even those of higher standing be gan to entertain a more tolerable opinion of me, and mechanically to refrain from those aggressions, which they saw I so well knew how to repress and to punish in such as were in any degree my match.

But what a situation was this for me, for

the solitary wanderer of the bleak and majestic domains of Mandeville House? I disdained the position in which I stood. As I have just said, the subduing of an opponent gave relief to the depression under which my spirit laboured. But this was but momentary. I purchased a constrained and half-felt respect. But by what means? Not by any qualities I had been accustomed to honour: but by the mere force of muscles and sinews, by that in which the most brutal rustic, nay the very beasts of the forest, might overmatch me. When I saw myself and my competitor, with arms and bosom bare, prepared for the disgraceful contest, what feelings of disgust and loathsomeness would rise in my soul! Hot tears, in spite of pride, not tears of cowardice, but of impatient indignation, would sometimes swell to my eyes. But I dashed them away with scorn, and strung myself for the task which I had not the liberty to avoid.

9

Habits of solitude had given me a peculiar turn. I had no respect for the limbs and members of my body, and viewed them but as an incumbrance upon the activityof my spirit. They were mine, not me. My arm was but an implement and a tool, of the same nature as a hooked stick, and of no value but for the commmission in which it was employed. My creed was akin to that of Anaxarchus, of whom it is related that one of the Grecian tyrants having ordered him to be pounded in a mortar, he cried out under the execution, "Beat on, tyrant! Thou hast no power but on the case of Anaxarchus; himself thou canst not hurt:"-though I will not boast that I could have carried the principle of the philosopher to the same extent, as my master. Thinking thus, I detested the necessity I lay under, of being the captive of my body, and that by this means the soul of Mandeville, that free spirit that could wander unfettered from pole to pole, should be liable

De tominion of othe. if my body herefore seerm mark ny slavery; and forded ne 10 consolation. Gunded by these prin feit hat he vails of our c my home. The scene i placed. was in utter disco character of my spirit: An ness of this, daily increased centrated and misanthropic to a certain degree had su me from the earliest period brance.