The year had not long entered October, when I was convinced that a residence in the forest should be established at an early period of life; and I soon ceased to wonder at the cause wherefore, in old antiquity, men worshipped on the solitude of the mountain-tops, and in the solemnity of the groves, for I felt the admonition speak to my own heart. No language, nor the phrases of speech, can convey a just apprehension of what I would express; but when in the morning I wandered forth alone, or in the noontide sat in the shadow of the trees, or in the evening watched the subsidence of sounds, and during the midnight contemplated the stars as faces in a great theatre; I felt the true insignificance of man, and scorned myself for the importance I attached to my own being.

I am no misanthropist, as the foregoing passages of my biography avouch, nor am I what I esteem worse, an adversary; for to be a misanthropist argues an unknown antipathy towards individuals, those who should have been your friends; but in the loneness of the silent woods, a feeling has often been infused into me, at morning, noon, and evening, and at night, which has made me think myself hateful to my species, while I could only recall the remembrance of incidents that ought to have made them hateful to me. I would rather think ill of myself, as an exception, than suspect universal mankind.