A Book of the Passions, ... illustrated with ... engravings from drawings by the most eminent artists, under the superintendence of ... C. Heath

Front matter

A BOOK OF THE PASSIONS. PR1NTBU BV CBj___-_, !J, Ul_ DE VAL'CIKAP.U, A BOOK OF THE PASSIONS BY G. P. R. JAMES. TO WHICH ARE ADOED OTHER' TALES, BV THE SAME AUTHOR. ■w PARIS, PUBLISHED BY A. AND W. GALIGNANI AND &., I. 18, RUE VIVIENNE. 1839. TO LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR HERBERT TAYLOR, G. C. B. &C. &.C. &c. THIS WORK, AS A SLIGHT AND INSUFFICIENT TESTIMONY OF THE MOST SINCERE RESPECT, THE HIGHEST ESTEEM, AND THE DEEPEST PERSONAL REGARD , 3. Slelucatc. BY THE AUTHOR. REMORSE. REMORSE. Winter is upon my brow, and in my heart— the dark, the sombre, the hopeless winter of age; with no bright spring to gladden the straining eye of expectation, no warmer season, no flowery hours, beyond ! Winter is upon my brow, and in my heart— the stern, cold, sorrowful winter of age : but not the winter as it comes to some, after a long and sunshiny life of joy treading upon joy, and of one pleasant cup drained after another till the sated and the weary spirit sees the hour of rest approaching with the calm glad hope of peaceful slumber, destined to end in anolher day as bright, as full of glory and enjoyment !

Time , that has blanched the hair and dimmed the eye ; Time, that has bent the powerful frame and relaxed the vigorous sinew ; Time, that obliterates so many things from the tablets of memory — is it Time that has blotted out the joys, the hopes, the feelings, that were once bright and clear in this stony heart ? is it Time that has rendered the past a fearful chaos of dark remembrances ; the future, a vision of terrible apprehensions ? Alas, no ! Time has broken down the strength of limb, blanched the jetty locks that curled around my brow in youth, dimmed the bright eye that gazed unshielded on the sun, made the hand tremble and the head to bow. All the slow ruin that he works on man, Time has wrought on me; but he has refused me all those blessings which soften and alleviate the destructive power of his calm deliberate hand.

He has taken away no dark memory of the past , he has assuaged no pang, he has relieved me of no burden, he has removed no regret, he has given no hope, he has withheld even the consolation of decay, he has denied me death itself. Lingering onward, beyond the allotted space of REMORSE. man, I seem still approaching to an end that is not reached ; and, as if the agonies of the heart had hardened into marble the external frame, the ruin of these fleshly limbs marches with the same slow progress which marks the decay of the dark and gloomy arches amidst which I dwell. I can remember yonder wide and spreading elm, which shadows the fountain before the door of the abbey, a sapling tree, scarce higher than my staff. I can remember yon iron chain, now worn and corroded with the rust, which at taches the cup to the stonework round the spring, new and polished from the hands of the workman.