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THE LEPER'S CONFESSION. 3 down in my solitary hiding place, as the dog crawls to his kennel, and wept until the morning.

I left my father's house, for what was my father's house to me more than any other spot on earth. So far from finding my affliction soothed, by being near those whom nature bade me love, their aversion caused me to feel, in the utmost poignancy, the severity of my fate. I was goaded to madness, for my feelings were daily crushed under foot as heedlessly as the flowers that spring in the valley. My father's house became hell to me, and I left it, for I felt that even a lazar house, compared to it would have been heaven.

I had attained the age of manhood when I went forth into the world. I sought a distant clime where both my person and name were unknown, and I changed my name, lest that might possibly lead to my identity. The marks of my fatal disease were now concealed beneath my clothing, and I mingled with mankind no longer a proscribed wretch, but felt like another being and rose from the earth regenerate. My heart was joyous and leaped at the sound of the glad voices of my fellow mortals. I admired the beauties that nature presented on all sides, as though they had been made for my enjoyment, and while I contemplated them, I ceased to remember that my hopes of happiness had been blighted never to put forth again.

In the enthusiasm of the moment I exclaimed, " this world must last forever. It is too beautiful a creation to have been made to be destroyed. As it was centuries ago it is at the present time; and as it is now it will remain through myriads of unborn ages. No external objects have heretofore influenced its course, nor have internal commotions affected in the slightest degree its movements. Its velocity is the same; its weight neither diminished nor increased, for we bring nothing into the world and nothing can we take out of it. Man in his pride may build, heap mountain upon mountain, until his works bear the same proportion to his hand, as the extended coral reef to the little insect that framed it, and still with all his toil he cannot add as much as the weight of a feather to the weight of the world. He may change the features of the works of nature, but the power of creation to the minutest degree is denied him. The influence of other spheres upon this globe is the same as when the Almighty hand first set the countless orbs in motion. Night follows day, and the various seasons still succeed each other in the order that it was first decreed. The earth has undergone no change in its products, for those plants that were indigenous still remain so, and those that were exotics ages ago will not yet spring spontaneously from the soil. The seed must first be scattered. "

Thus I reasoned to convince myself that the world must last forever, and I wished it might be so, but experience soon taught me, that had the extent of its duration been pronounced, no matter how brief, it must have exceeded far the measure of my joys.

I mingled with the world, as I have said, and appeared to enjoy what was passing, but like the felon who has escaped from prison, I lived in daily terror of detection. I watched the progress of my disease, and had it been the brand of a convict, I could not have contemplated it with greater horror. I lived in constant dread lest it should seize upon my face and hands, and render concealment longer impossible. If the indelible brand of guilt had been stampt upon me, I might have collected sufficient fortitude to brave the odium, for there is a recklessness too frequently attendant upon crime, which renders the offender insensible to the insults of the world, having forfeited its fair opinion but I was innocent; I was persecuted for a misfortune in which I had no agency, and which was beyond my power to remedy, and the consciousness of this innocence, so far from imparting strength, weighed like a millstone on me, and my mind had not sufficient energy to cast it off. I suffered I knew not wherefore, but it was the will of heaven, and there was no relief.

I had now been so long in the habit of contemplating myself, and viewing my associates with the eye of suspicion, that I became contracted in my feelings, and lived for myself alone. How desolate is the human heart when it meets with no object upon which it can repose ! it becomes the sepulchre of its better feelings, and as they decay, weeds and nettles spring up as about the monumental stone that marks the spot where beauty moulders.

My existence might be compared to the dream of a delirious wretch labouring under a raging fever. Nothing appeared in its true colours, and shadows struck as deep terror to my soul as their substance. A change came over me, and instead of admiring the glorious works that had awakened me to new life, I sickened at the sight and closed my eyes upon them. But winter came, and it was spring to my soul as I beheld the trees stripped of their foliage, the streams locked in icy fetters, the earth sterile and covered with snow, and nature in her hour of adversity. There was. no music to my ear like the hollow moan of the tempest as it swelled like a dirge over the ruin it had made. Such was my state of mind when I met with one as beautiful as the embodying of a poet's dream, and pure as the lily that grows in the shade and dies untarnished by the rays of the sun. She was one of those that nature at intervals throws among us as it were to give a clue to the imagination of the beholder, to form some idea of the celestial beings who inhabit a purer orb than this. I loved her and was beloved. Her whole soul reposed in me in perfect confidence, and my feelings for her were such as I imagined could never have sprung from my desolate heart.

Months passed away and our love for each other increased daily. The bliss of being near her more than compensated for all my sufferings, for I now felt that there was something worth living for, and while that remained, I should be invulnerable to all calamity. While indulging in this dream, one who was acquainted with me in my boyhood, passed me in the street. There