, dear companion of my later years, thou wast my
Electra! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection
wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For
thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of kindness and to
servile {8} ministrations of tenderest affection--to wipe away for years
the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when
parched and baked with fever; nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had
by long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my dread contest
with phantoms and shadowy enemies that oftentimes bade me "sleep no
more!"--not even then didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor
withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more
than Electra did of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman,
and the daughter of the king {9} of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her
face {10} in her robe.
But these troubles are past; and thou wilt read records of a period so
dolorous to us both as the legend of some hideous dream that can return
no more. Meantime, I am again in London, and again I pace the terraces
of Oxford Street by night; and oftentimes, when I am oppressed by
anxieties that demand all my philosophy and the comfort of thy presence
to support, and yet remember that I am separated from thee by three
hundred miles and the length of three dreary months, I look up the
streets that run northwards from Oxford Street, upon moonlight nights,
and recollect my youthful ejaculation of anguish; and remembering that
thou art sitting alone in that same valley, and mistress of that very
house to which my heart turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, I
think that, though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late, the
promptings of my heart may yet have had reference to a remoter time, and
may be justified if read in another meaning; and if I could allow myself
to descend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I should again say
to myself, as I look to the North, "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove--"
and with how just a confidence in thy good and gracious nature might I
add the other half of my early ejaculation--"And _that_ way I would fly
for comfort!"
THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM
It is so long since I first took opium that if it had been a trifling
incident in my life I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal events
are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it I
remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804.
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