country soon after. I brought with me, premature age, a past of
melancholy memories, and the magic spectacles. I had become their
slave. I had nothing more to fear. Having seen myself, I was compelled
to see others, properly to understand my relations to them. The lights
that cheer the future of other men had gone out for me. My eyes were
those of an exile turned backwards upon the receding shore, and not
forwards with hope upon the ocean. I mingled with men, but with little
pleasure. There are but many varieties of a few types. I did not find
those I came to clearer sighted than those I had left behind. I heard
men called shrewd and wise, and report said they were highly
intelligent and successful. But when I looked at them through my
glasses, I found no halo of real manliness. My finest sense detected
no aroma of purity and principle; but I saw only a fungus that had
fattened and spread in a night. They all went to the theater to see
actors upon the stage. I went to see actors in the boxes, so
consummately cunning, that the others did not know they were acting,
and they did not suspect it themselves.

"Perhaps you wonder it did not make me misanthropical. My dear
friends, do not forget that I had seen myself. It made me
compassionate, not cynical. Of course I could not value highly the
ordinary standards of success and excellence. When I went to church
and saw a thin, blue, artificial flower, or a great sleepy cushion
expounding the beauty of holiness to pews full of eagles, half-eagles,
and threepences, however adroitly concealed in broadcloth and boots:
or saw an onion in an Easter bonnet weeping over the sins of Magdalen,
I did not feel as they felt who saw in all this, not only propriety,
but piety. Or when at public meetings an eel stood up on end, and
wriggled and squirmed lithely in every direction, and declared that,
for his part, he went in for rainbows and hot water--how could I help