Chapter 1 - Page 2

crimes; my
faults may easily be pardoned; for they proceeded not from evil motive
but from want of judgement; and I believe few would say that they
could, by a different conduct and superior wisdom, have avoided the
misfortunes to which I am the victim. My fate has been governed by
necessity, a hideous necessity. It required hands stronger than mine;
stronger I do believe than any human force to break the thick,
adamantine chain that has bound me, once breathing nothing but joy,
ever possessed by a warm love & delight in goodness,--to misery only
to be ended, and now about to be ended, in death. But I forget myself,
my tale is yet untold. I will pause a few moments, wipe my dim eyes,
and endeavour to lose the present obscure but heavy feeling of
unhappiness in the more acute emotions of the past.[6]

I was born in England. My father was a man of rank:[7] he had lost his
father early, and was educated by a weak mother with all the
indulgence she thought due to a nobleman of wealth. He was sent to
Eton and afterwards to college; & allowed from childhood the free use
of large sums of money; thus enjoying from his earliest youth the
independance which a boy with these advantages, always acquires at a
public school.

Under the influence of these circumstances his passions found a deep
soil wherein they might strike their roots and flourish either as
flowers or weeds as was their nature. By being always allowed to act
for himself his character became strongly and early marked and
exhibited a various surface on which a quick sighted observer might
see the seeds of virtues and of misfortunes. His careless
extravagance, which made him squander immense sums of money to satisfy
passing whims, which from their apparent energy he dignified with the
name of passions, often displayed itself in unbounded generosity. Yet
while he earnestly occupied himself about the wants of others his own
desires were gratified to their fullest extent. He gave his money, but
none of his own wishes were sacrifised to his gifts; he gave his time,
which he did not value, and his affections which he was happy in any
manner to have called into action.

I do not say that if his own desires had been put in competition with
those of others that he would have displayed undue selfishness, but
this trial was never made. He was nurtured in prosperity and attended
by all its advantages; every one loved him and wished to gratify him.
He was ever employed in promoting the pleasures of his companions--but
their pleasures were his; and if he bestowed more attention upon the
feelings of others than is usual with schoolboys it was because his
social temper could never enjoy itself if every brow was not as free
from care as his own.