We act like the chemist, who should reject
the finest ore, and employ none but what was sufficiently debased to fit
it immediately for the vilest uses. But the energy of these men, such as
I beheld it, was in the highest degree misapplied, unassisted by liberal
and enlightened views, and directed only to the most narrow and
contemptible purposes.
The residence I have been describing might to many persons have appeared
attended with intolerable inconveniences. But, exclusively of its
advantages as a field for speculation, it was Elysium, compared with
that from which I had just escaped. Displeasing company, incommodious
apartments, filthiness, and riot, lost the circumstance by which they
could most effectually disgust, when I was not compelled to remain with
them. All hardships I could patiently endure, in comparison with the
menace of a violent and untimely death. There was no suffering that I
could not persuade myself to consider as trivial, except that which
flowed from the tyranny, the frigid precaution, or the inhuman revenge
of my own species.
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