Again however, the subject was revived. Sleeping and
waking, by night and by day, it was before me ; and at last I
began to perceive that if the attempt were ever to be made, it
must be made by one desperate, convulsive, instantaneous ef-
fort. I determined to deliberate no longer — or rather to stand
no longer, shivering like a coward, upon the brink of adven-
ture, under pretence of deliberation ; and therefore, having
first carefully stopped ' ray ears and shut my eyes, I threw my-
self headlong over the precipice. Behold the result ! If I have
not brought up the pearls, I can say at least that I have been
to the bottom — and 1 might have added — of the human heart
sometimes — but for the perverse and foolish insincerity of the
world, which if I had so finished the sentence, would have set
their faces forever against my book; although that same world,
had I been wise enough — no, not wise enough but cunning
enough, to hold my peace, might have been ready to acknowl-
edge that I had been sometimes, even where I say— to the ve-
ry bottom of the human, heartj

I plunged. But when I did, it was rather to relieve my own
Soul from the intolerable weight of her own reproach, than
with any hope of living to complete the design, except at a sac-
rifice next in degree to that of self-immolation. Would you
know what more than any other thing — more than all other
things determined me at last ? I was an American. I had
heard the insolent question of a Scotch Reviewer, repeated on



X UNPUBLISHED PREFACE.
