The Yazoo Democrat., 1854-05-03
HAZLITT,

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his affections might gather; rest he had not
for the sole of his burning foot. One chance
of regaining some peace, or chance as he
trusted for time, was torn from him at the
moment Of gathering its blossoms. lie had
been divorced from his wife. Subsequently
he becamee deeply fascinated by young
woman in no very elevated rank, for she held
some domestic office of superintendence in a
boarding house kept 10y her father, but Of In
teresting person, and endowed with strong
intellectual sensibilities She had encourag-
ed Hazlitt had gratifed him by reading his
works with intelligent sympathy; and, under
what form Of duplicity it is hard to say, had
partly engaged her faith to Hazlitt as his fu-
ture wife, while secretly she was holding a
correspondence, too tender to be misinter-
preted, with gentleman resident in the same
establishment Suspicious were put aside
for time; but they returned, and gathered
too thickly for Hazlitt's penetration to cheat
itself any longer. Once and forever he re-
solved to satisfy himsek1
On Sunday, fatal to him and his farewell
hopes of domestic happiness, he had reason to
believe that she whom he now loved to ex-
cess had made some appointment out ofdoors
with his rival. 1t was in London; and
through the crowds of London, HazItt fol-
lowed her steps to the rendezvous. Fancy
ing herself lost in the multitude that stream
ed through Lincoln's Inn Fields, the treache-
rous young woman met her more favored low
er without alarm, and betrayed, too clearly
for any further deception, the state of her
affections by the tenderness Of her manner
There went out the last light that threw a
guiding ray over the storm-vexed course OF
Hazlitt. He was too much in earnest, and
he had witnessed too much to be deceived or
appeased. I" / whistled her down the wind, !"
was his own account Of the catastrophe but
in doing so, he had torn his own heart-strings,
entangled with her jesses" Neither did
he, as others would have done, seek to dis
guise his misfortune. On the contrary, he
cared not for the ridicule attached to such a
situation among the unfeeling; the wrench
within had been too profound to leave room
for sensibility to the sneers outside. A fast
friend of his at that time, and one who never
ceased to be his apologist, described him to
me as having become absolutely maniacal
during the first pressure of his affliction. He
went about proclaiming the case, and insist
ing on its details to every stranger that would
listen. He. even published the whole story
to the world, in his Modern Pygmalion."
And people generally, who could not be
aware of his feelings, or the way in which
this treachery acted upon his mind as a ratl-
ication of all other treacheries and wrongs
that he had suffered through life, laughed at
him, or expressed disgust for him, as too
coarsely indelicate in making such disclo-
sures. But there was no indelicacy IN such
an act of confidence, growing, as it did, out
of his lacerated heart 1t was an explosion
of frenzy. He threw out his clamorous an
oJlish to the clouds, and to the winds, and to
the air caring not qUho might listen, aOho
might sympathyze, or who might sneer.-
Pity was no demand Of his; laughter was
no wrong the sole necessity for him was,
to empty his overburdened spirit. After this
desolating experience, the evaporation OF
Hazitt's political temper grew fercer, dark
er, steadier. His Life of Napoleon" was
prosecuted subsequently to this, and perhaps
under this remembrance, as a reservoir that
might receive all the vast overfows of his
wrath, much of which was not merely polit-
Iical, or in a spirit of bacchanalian partner
ship, but was even morbidly anti-soeial. lie
hated with all his heart, every institution Of
man, and his pretensions. He loathed his
own relation to the human race.-De Qui'a-
cey.