sometimes led to investigate Indian manners and customs, and to examine the original doctrines of the Gentoos, before they had degenerated into their present gross superstition, exhibiting in many respects traces of sublimity. His aim was to examine truth at its native fountain, unsullied by speculative and erroneous theories; not to float on the surface, but to dive deep, even to the gathering of its inmost treasures. It was thus that Douglas employed the dawn of his reformation.
In emerging from that twilight which preceded the survey he then took of the rising morn, much, he felt assured, was to be done, reflected on, endured, and even conquered, before his advancement to a state of more permanent and genuine virtue. A new creation had opened upon him, or rather a new life; and he was well aware that as is the rise of infancy to youth and manhood, so comparatively is the progress of the light of intelligence and the love of goodness in the human soul.
It was true he had burst the trammels of his captivity, and that the path of virtue was before him, no longer veiled and bewildered by the mists of evil and mazes of error, with all their vain and false delusions. Nevertheless, however delightful seemed the change,—the brilliant prospect before him
