This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1832 edition. Excerpt: ...which, when younger, I had despised? How different is it to see things by themselves, and when our minds are distracted with other objects? The time was now past when my glowing imagination, regardless of all the world besides, alone desired Sophia. I was no longer solicitous about her; I possessed her; and ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1832 edition. Excerpt: ...which, when younger, I had despised? How different is it to see things by themselves, and when our minds are distracted with other objects? The time was now past when my glowing imagination, regardless of all the world besides, alone desired Sophia. I was no longer solicitous about her; I possessed her; and the power of her charms cast a lustre on those objects which, in my youth, it had obscured. But these objects soonweakened my desires by dividing them. My heart, gradually relaxed by frivolous amusements, insensibly lost its first spring, and became incapable of warmth or strength. I roved restlessly from pleasure to pleasure; I sought after every thing, and grew tired of every thing; I liked only those places where I was not, and endeavoured to forget myself in dissipation. I experienced a revolution, of which I wished not to be convinced myself. I did not give myself time to return to myself, through a dread of not finding myself. All my attachments were lessened, all my affections were cooled. I had substituted a jargon of morality and sentiment in place of truth. I was a gallant without passion, a stoic without virtue, a philosopher busied about trifles. I had nothing of Emilius but the name--some professions of what he once had been.-The freedom of my discourse, the independence of my spirit, my pleasures, my duties--you, my son--even Sophia herself, --all that before animated, that elevated my soul, and constituted the plenitude of my existence, quitting me by degrees, seemed to make me quit myself, and left in my depraved mind only a painful, wearing sensation of vacancy and abjection. In a word, I no longer loved, or, at least, thought so. This violent flame, which seemed almost extinct, lay hidden under the embers only to blaze forth..
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