Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/52

 "It was no difficult task faithfully to execute the functions assigned to me. No merit could accrue to me from this source: I was exposed to no temptation; I had passed the feverish period of youth: no contagious example had contaminated my principles; I had resisted the allurements of sensuality and dissipation incident to my age. My dwelling was in pomp and splendour: I had amassed sufficient to secure me, in case of unforeseen accidents, in the enjoyment of competence. My mental resources were not despicable; and the external means of intellectual gratification were boundless. I enjoyed an unsullied reputation; my character was well known in that sphere which my lady occupied, not only by means of her favourable report, but in numberless ways in which it was my fortune to perform personal services to others."

" had a twin brother. Nature had impressed the same image upon them, and had modelled them after the same pattern. The resemblance between them was exact to a degree almost incredible: in infancy and childhood they were perpetually liable to be mistaken for each other. As they grew up, nothing to a superficial examination appeared to distinguish them but the sexual characteristics. A sagacious observer would, doubtless, have noted the most essential differences: in all those modifications of the features which are produced by habits and sentiments, no two persons were less alike. Nature seemed to have intended them as examples of the futility of those theories which ascribe every thing to conformation and instinct, and nothing to external circumstances; in what different modes the same materials may be fashioned, and to what different purposes the same materials may be applied. Perhaps the rudiments of their intellectual character, as well as of their form, were the same; but the powers that in one case were exerted in the cause of virtue,