Page:Confessions of an English opium-eater (IA confessionsofeng00dequrich).pdf/93

 derived from a common root. And herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness of human desires, that oftentimes on moon-light nights, during my first mournful abode in London, my consolation was (if such it could be thought) to gaze from Oxford-street up every avenue in succession which pierces through the heart of Marylebone to the fields and the woods; and that, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which lay part in light and part in shade, "that is the road to the north, and therefore to, and if I had the wings of a dove, that way I would fly for comfort." Thus I said, and thus I wished, in my blindness; yet, even in that very northern region it was, even in that very valley, nay, in that very house to which my erroneous wishes pointed, that this second birth of my sufferings began; and that they again threatened to besiege the citadel of life and hope. There it was, that for years I was persecuted by visions as ugly, and as ghastly phantoms as ever haunted the couch of an Orestes: and in this unhappier than he, that sleep, which comes to all as a respite