him depended on a man’s faith in his existence, Olivieri perceived the state of my mind, I asked his assistance, he laughed at my attempt at knowledge, and bewildered me still more; I was restless, and seemed at length to be deprived of all motive for action. No superior being to smile upon our efforts, to whom we may show our gratitude, and whose approbation we may obtain; no virtue, but artificial trammels set up under its name, to lure the unwary into the toils of the wittiest knave. I wished I had never left those mountains, amidst which, I had thought, I felt the breath of a superior being, though he was clothed by my imagination in terrors. Nothing above man, and that man the sport of chance, of his own caprice. Yet within my breast it seemed as if aspirings dwelt which seemed to have been born with me. Were they but a mockery? I grew melancholy, whole days confined to my room, I meditated till my brain became a wilderness of various thoughts so en-
