Introduction

The Pub­lish­ers of the Stand­ard Novels, in se­lect­ing Franken­stein for one of their series, ex­pressed a wish that I should fur­nish them with some ac­count of the ori­gin of the story. I am the more will­ing to com­ply, be­cause I shall thus give a gen­eral an­swer to the ques­tion, so very fre­quently asked me—“How I, when a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?” It is true that I am very averse to bring­ing my­self for­ward in print; but as my ac­count will only ap­pear as an ap­pend­age to a former pro­duc­tion, and as it will be con­fined to such top­ics as have con­nec­tion with my au­thor­ship alone, I can scarcely ac­cuse my­self of a per­sonal in­tru­sion.

It is not sin­gu­lar that, as the daugh­ter of two per­sons of dis­tin­guished lit­er­ary celebrity, I should very early in life have thought of writ­ing. As a child I scribbled; and my fa­vour­ite pas­time, dur­ing the hours given me for re­cre­ation, was to “write stor­ies.” Still I had a dearer pleas­ure than this, which was the form­a­tion of castles in the air—the in­dul­ging in wak­ing dreams—the fol­low­ing up trains of thought, which had for their sub­ject the form­a­tion of a suc­ces­sion of ima­gin­ary in­cid­ents. My dreams were at once more fant­astic and agree­able than my writ­ings. In the lat­ter I was a close im­it­ator—rather do­ing as oth­ers had done, than put­ting down the sug­ges­tions of my own mind. What I wrote was in­ten­ded at least for one other eye—my child­hood’s com­pan­ion and friend; but my dreams were all my own; I ac­coun­ted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when an­noyed—my dearest pleas­ure when free.

I lived prin­cip­ally in the coun­try as a girl, and passed a con­sid­er­able time in Scot­land. I made oc­ca­sional vis­its to the more pic­tur­esque parts; but my ha­bitual res­id­ence was on the blank and dreary north­ern shores of the Tay, near Dun­dee. Blank and dreary on ret­ro­spec­tion I call them; they were not so to me then. They were the eyry of free­dom, and the pleas­ant re­gion where un­heeded I could com­mune with the creatures of my fancy. I wrote then—but in a most com­mon­place style. It was be­neath the trees of the grounds be­long­ing to our house, or on the bleak sides of the wood­less moun­tains near, that my true com­pos­i­tions, the airy flights of my ima­gin­a­tion, were born and fostered. I did not make my­self the heroine of my tales. Life ap­peared to me too com­mon­place an af­fair as re­garded my­self. I could not fig­ure to my­self that ro­mantic woes or won­der­ful events would ever be my lot; but I was not con­fined to my own iden­tity, and I could people the hours with cre­ations far more in­ter­est­ing to me at that age, than my own sen­sa­tions.

After this my life be­came busier, and real­ity stood in place of fic­tion. My hus­band, how­ever, was from the first, very anxious that I should prove my­self worthy of my par­ent­age, and en­rol my­self on the page of fame. He was forever in­cit­ing me to ob­tain lit­er­ary repu­ta­tion, which even on my own part I cared for then, though since I have be­come in­fin­itely in­dif­fer­ent to it. At this time he de­sired that I should write, not so much with the idea that I could pro­duce any­thing worthy of no­tice, but that he might him­self judge how far I pos­sessed the prom­ise of bet­ter things here­after. Still I did noth­ing. Trav­el­ling, and the cares of a fam­ily, oc­cu­pied my time; and study, in the way of read­ing, or im­prov­ing my ideas in com­mu­nic­a­tion with his far more cul­tiv­ated mind, was all of lit­er­ary em­ploy­ment that en­gaged my at­ten­tion.

In the sum­mer of 1816, we vis­ited Switzer­land, and be­came the neigh­bours of Lord Byron. At first we spent our pleas­ant hours on the lake, or wan­der­ing on its shores; and Lord Byron, who was writ­ing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon pa­per. These, as he brought them suc­cess­ively to us, clothed in all the light and har­mony of po­etry, seemed to stamp as di­vine the glor­ies of heaven and earth, whose in­flu­ences we par­took with him.

But it proved a wet, un­genial sum­mer, and in­cess­ant rain of­ten con­fined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stor­ies, trans­lated from the Ger­man into French, fell into our hands. There was the His­tory of the In­con­stant Lover, who, when he thought to clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his vows, found him­self in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deser­ted. There was the tale of the sin­ful founder of his race, whose miser­able doom it was to be­stow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house, just when they reached the age of prom­ise. His gi­gantic, shad­owy form, clothed like the ghost in Ham­let, in com­plete ar­mour, but with the beaver up, was seen at mid­night, by the moon’s fit­ful beams, to ad­vance slowly along the gloomy av­enue. The shape was lost be­neath the shadow of the castle walls; but soon a gate swung back, a step was heard, the door of the cham­ber opened, and he ad­vanced to the couch of the bloom­ing youths, cradled in healthy sleep. Eternal sor­row sat upon his face as he bent down and kissed the fore­head of the boys, who from that hour withered like flowers snapt upon the stalk. I have not seen these stor­ies since then; but their in­cid­ents are as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yes­ter­day.

“We will each write a ghost story,” said Lord Byron; and his pro­pos­i­tion was ac­ceded to. There were four of us. The noble au­thor began a tale, a frag­ment of which he prin­ted at the end of his poem of Mazeppa. Shel­ley, more apt to em­body ideas and sen­ti­ments in the ra­di­ance of bril­liant im­agery, and in the mu­sic of the most me­lodi­ous verse that ad­orns our lan­guage, than to in­vent the ma­chinery of a story, com­menced one foun­ded on the ex­per­i­ences of his early life. Poor Polidori had some ter­rible idea about a skull-headed lady, who was so pun­ished for peep­ing through a key­hole—what to see I for­get—some­thing very shock­ing and wrong of course; but when she was re­duced to a worse con­di­tion than the renowned Tom of Coventry, he did not know what to do with her, and was ob­liged to des­patch her to the tomb of the Capu­lets, the only place for which she was fit­ted. The il­lus­tri­ous po­ets also, an­noyed by the plat­it­ude of prose, speedily re­lin­quished their un­con­genial task.

I busied my­self to think of a story—a story to rival those which had ex­cited us to this task. One which would speak to the mys­ter­i­ous fears of our nature, and awaken thrill­ing hor­ror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beat­ings of the heart. If I did not ac­com­plish these things, my ghost story would be un­worthy of its name. I thought and pondered—vainly. I felt that blank in­cap­ab­il­ity of in­ven­tion which is the greatest misery of au­thor­ship, when dull Noth­ing replies to our anxious in­voc­a­tions. Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morn­ing, and each morn­ing I was forced to reply with a mor­ti­fy­ing neg­at­ive.

Everything must have a be­gin­ning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that be­gin­ning must be linked to some­thing that went be­fore. The Hin­dus give the world an ele­phant to sup­port it, but they make the ele­phant stand upon a tor­toise. In­ven­tion, it must be humbly ad­mit­ted, does not con­sist in cre­at­ing out of void, but out of chaos; the ma­ter­i­als must, in the first place, be af­forded: it can give form to dark, shape­less sub­stances, but can­not bring into be­ing the sub­stance it­self. In all mat­ters of dis­cov­ery and in­ven­tion, even of those that ap­per­tain to the ima­gin­a­tion, we are con­tinu­ally re­minded of the story of Colum­bus and his egg. In­ven­tion con­sists in the ca­pa­city of seiz­ing on the cap­ab­il­it­ies of a sub­ject, and in the power of mould­ing and fash­ion­ing ideas sug­ges­ted to it.

Many and long were the con­ver­sa­tions between Lord Byron and Shel­ley, to which I was a de­vout but nearly si­lent listener. Dur­ing one of these, vari­ous philo­soph­ical doc­trines were dis­cussed, and among oth­ers the nature of the prin­ciple of life, and whether there was any prob­ab­il­ity of its ever be­ing dis­covered and com­mu­nic­ated. They talked of the ex­per­i­ments of Dr. Dar­win, (I speak not of what the Doc­tor really did, or said that he did, but, as more to my pur­pose, of what was then spoken of as hav­ing been done by him,) who pre­served a piece of ver­mi­celli in a glass case, till by some ex­traordin­ary means it began to move with vol­un­tary mo­tion. Not thus, after all, would life be given. Per­haps a corpse would be re­an­im­ated; gal­van­ism had given token of such things: per­haps the com­pon­ent parts of a creature might be man­u­fac­tured, brought to­gether, and en­dued with vi­tal warmth.

Night waned upon this talk, and even the witch­ing hour had gone by, be­fore we re­tired to rest. When I placed my head on my pil­low, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My ima­gin­a­tion, un­bid­den, pos­sessed and guided me, gift­ing the suc­cess­ive im­ages that arose in my mind with a vivid­ness far bey­ond the usual bounds of rev­erie. I saw—with shut eyes, but acute men­tal vis­ion—I saw the pale stu­dent of un­hal­lowed arts kneel­ing be­side the thing he had put to­gether. I saw the hideous phant­asm of a man stretched out, and then, on the work­ing of some power­ful en­gine, show signs of life, and stir with an un­easy, half vi­tal mo­tion. Fright­ful must it be; for su­premely fright­ful would be the ef­fect of any hu­man en­deav­our to mock the stu­pendous mech­an­ism of the Creator of the world. His suc­cess would ter­rify the artist; he would rush away from his odi­ous handy­work, hor­ror-stricken. He would hope that, left to it­self, the slight spark of life which he had com­mu­nic­ated would fade; that this thing, which had re­ceived such im­per­fect an­im­a­tion, would sub­side into dead mat­ter; and he might sleep in the be­lief that the si­lence of the grave would quench forever the tran­si­ent ex­ist­ence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; be­hold the hor­rid thing stands at his bed­side, open­ing his cur­tains, and look­ing on him with yel­low, wa­tery, but spec­u­lat­ive eyes.

I opened mine in ter­ror. The idea so pos­sessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to ex­change the ghastly im­age of my fancy for the real­it­ies around. I see them still; the very room, the dark par­quet, the closed shut­ters, with the moon­light strug­gling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were bey­ond. I could not so eas­ily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me. I must try to think of some­thing else. I re­curred to my ghost story—my tire­some un­lucky ghost story! O! if I could only con­trive one which would frighten my reader as I my­self had been frightened that night!

Swift as light and as cheer­ing was the idea that broke in upon me. “I have found it! What ter­ri­fied me will ter­rify oth­ers; and I need only de­scribe the spectre which had haunted my mid­night pil­low.” On the mor­row I an­nounced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, It was on a dreary night of Novem­ber, mak­ing only a tran­script of the grim ter­rors of my wak­ing dream.

At first I thought but of a few pages—of a short tale; but Shel­ley urged me to de­velop the idea at greater length. I cer­tainly did not owe the sug­ges­tion of one in­cid­ent, nor scarcely of one train of feel­ing, to my hus­band, and yet but for his in­cite­ment, it would never have taken the form in which it was presen­ted to the world. From this de­clar­a­tion I must ex­cept the pre­face. As far as I can re­col­lect, it was en­tirely writ­ten by him.

And now, once again, I bid my hideous pro­geny go forth and prosper. I have an af­fec­tion for it, for it was the off­spring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart. Its sev­eral pages speak of many a walk, many a drive, and many a con­ver­sa­tion, when I was not alone; and my com­pan­ion was one who, in this world, I shall never see more. But this is for my­self; my read­ers have noth­ing to do with these as­so­ci­ations.

I will add but one word as to the al­ter­a­tions I have made. They are prin­cip­ally those of style. I have changed no por­tion of the story, nor in­tro­duced any new ideas or cir­cum­stances. I have men­ded the lan­guage where it was so bald as to in­ter­fere with the in­terest of the nar­rat­ive; and these changes oc­cur al­most ex­clus­ively in the be­gin­ning of the first volume. Throughout they are en­tirely con­fined to such parts as are mere ad­juncts to the story, leav­ing the core and sub­stance of it un­touched.

M. W. S.

Lon­don, Octo­ber 15, 1831.

Preface

The event on which this fic­tion is foun­ded, has been sup­posed, by Dr. Dar­win, and some of the physiolo­gical writers of Ger­many, as not of im­possible oc­cur­rence. I shall not be sup­posed as ac­cord­ing the re­motest de­gree of ser­i­ous faith to such an ima­gin­a­tion; yet, in as­sum­ing it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not con­sidered my­self as merely weav­ing a series of su­per­nat­ural ter­rors. The event on which the in­terest of the story de­pends is ex­empt from the dis­ad­vant­ages of a mere tale of spectres or en­chant­ment. It was re­com­men­ded by the nov­elty of the situ­ations which it de­vel­ops; and, how­ever im­possible as a phys­ical fact, af­fords a point of view to the ima­gin­a­tion for the de­lin­eat­ing of hu­man pas­sions more com­pre­hens­ive and com­mand­ing than any which the or­din­ary re­la­tions of ex­ist­ing events can yield.

I have thus en­deav­oured to pre­serve the truth of the ele­ment­ary prin­ciples of hu­man nature, while I have not scrupled to in­nov­ate upon their com­bin­a­tions. The Iliad, the tra­gic po­etry of Greece—Shak­speare, in The Tem­pest, and Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream—and most es­pe­cially Milton, in Paradise Lost, con­form to this rule; and the most humble nov­el­ist, who seeks to con­fer or re­ceive amuse­ment from his la­bours, may, without pre­sump­tion, ap­ply to prose fic­tion a li­cence, or rather a rule, from the ad­op­tion of which so many ex­quis­ite com­bin­a­tions of hu­man feel­ing have res­ul­ted in the highest spe­ci­mens of po­etry.

The cir­cum­stance on which my story rests was sug­ges­ted in cas­ual con­ver­sa­tion. It was com­menced partly as a source of amuse­ment, and partly as an ex­pedi­ent for ex­er­cising any un­tried re­sources of mind. Other motives were mingled with these, as the work pro­ceeded. I am by no means in­dif­fer­ent to the man­ner in which whatever moral tend­en­cies ex­ist in the sen­ti­ments or char­ac­ters it con­tains shall af­fect the reader; yet my chief con­cern in this re­spect has been lim­ited to the avoid­ing the en­er­vat­ing ef­fects of the nov­els of the present day, and to the ex­hib­i­tion of the ami­able­ness of do­mestic af­fec­tion, and the ex­cel­lence of uni­ver­sal vir­tue. The opin­ions which nat­ur­ally spring from the char­ac­ter and situ­ation of the hero are by no means to be con­ceived as ex­ist­ing al­ways in my own con­vic­tion; nor is any in­fer­ence justly to be drawn from the fol­low­ing pages as pre­ju­dicing any philo­soph­ical doc­trine of whatever kind.

It is a sub­ject also of ad­di­tional in­terest to the au­thor, that this story was be­gun in the majestic re­gion where the scene is prin­cip­ally laid, and in so­ci­ety which can­not cease to be re­gret­ted. I passed the sum­mer of 1816 in the en­virons of Geneva. The sea­son was cold and rainy, and in the even­ings we crowded around a blaz­ing wood fire, and oc­ca­sion­ally amused ourselves with some Ger­man stor­ies of ghosts, which happened to fall into our hands. These tales ex­cited in us a play­ful de­sire of im­it­a­tion. Two other friends (a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more ac­cept­able to the pub­lic than any­thing I can ever hope to pro­duce) and my­self agreed to write each a story, foun­ded on some su­per­nat­ural oc­cur­rence.

The weather, how­ever, sud­denly be­came se­rene; and my two friends left me on a jour­ney among the Alps, and lost, in the mag­ni­fi­cent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly vis­ions. The fol­low­ing tale is the only one which has been com­pleted.

Mar­low, Septem­ber, 1817.

Frankenstein Or, the Modern Prometheus

To
Wil­liam God­win,
Author of Polit­ical Justice, Caleb Wil­li­ams, etc.,
This volume is re­spect­fully in­scribed by the au­thor.

“Did I re­quest thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I so­li­cit thee
From dark­ness to pro­mote me?”

Paradise Lost, X, 743–45

Letter I

To Mrs. Saville, Eng­land.

St. Peters­burgh, Dec. 11th, 17—.

You will re­joice to hear that no dis­aster has ac­com­pan­ied the com­mence­ment of an en­ter­prise which you have re­garded with such evil fore­bod­ings. I ar­rived here yes­ter­day; and my first task is to as­sure my dear sis­ter of my wel­fare, and in­creas­ing con­fid­ence in the suc­cess of my un­der­tak­ing.

I am already far north of Lon­don; and as I walk in the streets of Peters­burgh, I feel a cold north­ern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with de­light. Do you un­der­stand this feel­ing? This breeze, which has trav­elled from the re­gions to­wards which I am ad­van­cing, gives me a fore­taste of those icy climes. In­spir­ited by this wind of prom­ise, my day dreams be­come more fer­vent and vivid. I try in vain to be per­suaded that the pole is the seat of frost and des­ol­a­tion; it ever presents it­self to my ima­gin­a­tion as the re­gion of beauty and de­light. There, Mar­garet, the sun is forever vis­ible; its broad disk just skirt­ing the ho­ri­zon, and dif­fus­ing a per­petual splend­our. There—for with your leave, my sis­ter, I will put some trust in pre­ced­ing nav­ig­at­ors—there snow and frost are ban­ished; and, sail­ing over a calm sea, we may be waf­ted to a land sur­pass­ing in won­ders and in beauty every re­gion hitherto dis­covered on the hab­it­able globe. Its pro­duc­tions and fea­tures may be without ex­ample, as the phe­nom­ena of the heav­enly bod­ies un­doubtedly are in those un­dis­covered solitudes. What may not be ex­pec­ted in a coun­try of eternal light? I may there dis­cover the won­drous power which at­tracts the needle; and may reg­u­late a thou­sand ce­les­tial ob­ser­va­tions, that re­quire only this voy­age to render their seem­ing ec­cent­ri­cit­ies con­sist­ent forever. I shall sa­ti­ate my ar­dent curi­os­ity with the sight of a part of the world never be­fore vis­ited, and may tread a land never be­fore im­prin­ted by the foot of man. These are my en­tice­ments, and they are suf­fi­cient to con­quer all fear of danger or death, and to in­duce me to com­mence this la­bor­i­ous voy­age with the joy a child feels when he em­barks in a little boat, with his hol­i­day mates, on an ex­ped­i­tion of dis­cov­ery up his nat­ive river. But, sup­pos­ing all these con­jec­tures to be false, you can­not con­test the in­es­tim­able be­ne­fit which I shall con­fer on all man­kind to the last gen­er­a­tion, by dis­cov­er­ing a pas­sage near the pole to those coun­tries, to reach which at present so many months are re­quis­ite; or by as­cer­tain­ing the secret of the mag­net, which, if at all pos­sible, can only be ef­fected by an un­der­tak­ing such as mine.

These re­flec­tions have dis­pelled the agit­a­tion with which I began my let­ter, and I feel my heart glow with an en­thu­si­asm which el­ev­ates me to heaven; for noth­ing con­trib­utes so much to tran­quil­lise the mind as a steady pur­pose—a point on which the soul may fix its in­tel­lec­tual eye. This ex­ped­i­tion has been the fa­vour­ite dream of my early years. I have read with ar­dour the ac­counts of the vari­ous voy­ages which have been made in the pro­spect of ar­riv­ing at the North Pa­cific Ocean through the seas which sur­round the pole. You may re­mem­ber, that a his­tory of all the voy­ages made for pur­poses of dis­cov­ery com­posed the whole of our good uncle Tho­mas’s lib­rary. My edu­ca­tion was neg­lected, yet I was pas­sion­ately fond of read­ing. These volumes were my study day and night, and my fa­mili­ar­ity with them in­creased that re­gret which I had felt, as a child, on learn­ing that my father’s dy­ing in­junc­tion had for­bid­den my uncle to al­low me to em­bark in a sea­far­ing life.

These vis­ions faded when I per­used, for the first time, those po­ets whose ef­fu­sions en­tranced my soul, and lif­ted it to heaven. I also be­came a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own cre­ation; I ima­gined that I also might ob­tain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shak­speare are con­sec­rated. You are well ac­quain­ted with my fail­ure, and how heav­ily I bore the dis­ap­point­ment. But just at that time I in­her­ited the for­tune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the chan­nel of their earlier bent.

Six years have passed since I re­solved on my present un­der­tak­ing. I can, even now, re­mem­ber the hour from which I ded­ic­ated my­self to this great en­ter­prise. I com­menced by in­ur­ing my body to hard­ship. I ac­com­pan­ied the whale-fish­ers on sev­eral ex­ped­i­tions to the North Sea; I vol­un­tar­ily en­dured cold, fam­ine, thirst, and want of sleep; I of­ten worked harder than the com­mon sail­ors dur­ing the day, and de­voted my nights to the study of math­em­at­ics, the the­ory of medi­cine, and those branches of phys­ical sci­ence from which a naval ad­ven­turer might de­rive the greatest prac­tical ad­vant­age. Twice I ac­tu­ally hired my­self as an un­der-mate in a Green­land whaler, and ac­quit­ted my­self to ad­mir­a­tion. I must own I felt a little proud, when my cap­tain offered me the second dig­nity in the ves­sel, and en­treated me to re­main with the greatest earn­est­ness; so valu­able did he con­sider my ser­vices.

And now, dear Mar­garet, do I not de­serve to ac­com­plish some great pur­pose? My life might have been passed in ease and lux­ury; but I pre­ferred glory to every en­tice­ment that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some en­cour­aging voice would an­swer in the af­firm­at­ive! My cour­age and my res­ol­u­tion is firm; but my hopes fluc­tu­ate, and my spir­its are of­ten de­pressed. I am about to pro­ceed on a long and dif­fi­cult voy­age, the emer­gen­cies of which will de­mand all my forti­tude: I am re­quired not only to raise the spir­its of oth­ers, but some­times to sus­tain my own, when theirs are fail­ing.

This is the most fa­vour­able period for trav­el­ling in Rus­sia. They fly quickly over the snow in their sledges; the mo­tion is pleas­ant, and, in my opin­ion, far more agree­able than that of an Eng­lish stage­coach. The cold is not ex­cess­ive, if you are wrapped in furs—a dress which I have already ad­op­ted; for there is a great dif­fer­ence between walk­ing the deck and re­main­ing seated mo­tion­less for hours, when no ex­er­cise pre­vents the blood from ac­tu­ally freez­ing in your veins. I have no am­bi­tion to lose my life on the post-road between St. Peters­burgh and Archangel.

I shall de­part for the lat­ter town in a fort­night or three weeks; and my in­ten­tion is to hire a ship there, which can eas­ily be done by pay­ing the in­sur­ance for the owner, and to en­gage as many sail­ors as I think ne­ces­sary among those who are ac­cus­tomed to the whale-fish­ing. I do not in­tend to sail un­til the month of June; and when shall I re­turn? Ah, dear sis­ter, how can I an­swer this ques­tion? If I suc­ceed, many, many months, per­haps years, will pass be­fore you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.

Farewell, my dear, ex­cel­lent Mar­garet. Heaven shower down bless­ings on you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my grat­it­ude for all your love and kind­ness.

Your af­fec­tion­ate brother,

R. Walton.

Letter II

To Mrs. Saville, Eng­land.

Archangel, 28th March, 17—.

How slowly the time passes here, en­com­passed as I am by frost and snow! yet a second step is taken to­wards my en­ter­prise. I have hired a ves­sel, and am oc­cu­pied in col­lect­ing my sail­ors; those whom I have already en­gaged, ap­pear to be men on whom I can de­pend, and are cer­tainly pos­sessed of daunt­less cour­age.

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to sat­isfy; and the ab­sence of the ob­ject of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Mar­garet: when I am glow­ing with the en­thu­si­asm of suc­cess, there will be none to par­ti­cip­ate my joy; if I am as­sailed by dis­ap­point­ment, no one will en­deav­our to sus­tain me in de­jec­tion. I shall com­mit my thoughts to pa­per, it is true; but that is a poor me­dium for the com­mu­nic­a­tion of feel­ing. I de­sire the com­pany of a man who could sym­path­ise with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me ro­mantic, my dear sis­ter, but I bit­terly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet cour­ageous, pos­sessed of a cul­tiv­ated as well as of a ca­pa­cious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to ap­prove or amend my plans. How would such a friend re­pair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ar­dent in ex­e­cu­tion, and too im­pa­tient of dif­fi­culties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-edu­cated: for the first four­teen years of my life I ran wild on a com­mon, and read noth­ing but our uncle Tho­mas’s books of voy­ages. At that age I be­came ac­quain­ted with the cel­eb­rated po­ets of our own coun­try; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to de­rive its most im­port­ant be­ne­fits from such a con­vic­tion, that I per­ceived the ne­ces­sity of be­com­ing ac­quain­ted with more lan­guages than that of my nat­ive coun­try. Now I am twenty-eight, and am in real­ity more il­lit­er­ate than many school­boys of fif­teen. It is true that I have thought more, and that my day dreams are more ex­ten­ded and mag­ni­fi­cent; but they want (as the paint­ers call it) keep­ing; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to des­pise me as ro­mantic, and af­fec­tion enough for me to en­deav­our to reg­u­late my mind.

Well, these are use­less com­plaints; I shall cer­tainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among mer­chants and sea­men. Yet some feel­ings, un­al­lied to the dross of hu­man nature, beat even in these rugged bos­oms. My lieu­ten­ant, for in­stance, is a man of won­der­ful cour­age and en­ter­prise; he is madly de­sirous of glory: or rather, to word my phrase more char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally, of ad­vance­ment in his pro­fes­sion. He is an Eng­lish­man, and in the midst of na­tional and pro­fes­sional pre­ju­dices, un­softened by cul­tiv­a­tion, re­tains some of the noblest en­dow­ments of hu­man­ity. I first be­came ac­quain­ted with him on board a whale ves­sel: find­ing that he was un­em­ployed in this city, I eas­ily en­gaged him to as­sist in my en­ter­prise.

The mas­ter is a per­son of an ex­cel­lent dis­pos­i­tion, and is re­mark­able in the ship for his gen­tle­ness and the mild­ness of his dis­cip­line. This cir­cum­stance, ad­ded to his well known in­teg­rity and daunt­less cour­age, made me very de­sirous to en­gage him. A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent un­der your gentle and fem­in­ine foster­age, has so re­fined the ground­work of my char­ac­ter, that I can­not over­come an in­tense dis­taste to the usual bru­tal­ity ex­er­cised on board ship: I have never be­lieved it to be ne­ces­sary; and when I heard of a mar­iner equally noted for his kind­li­ness of heart, and the re­spect and obed­i­ence paid to him by his crew, I felt my­self pe­cu­li­arly for­tu­nate in be­ing able to se­cure his ser­vices. I heard of him first in rather a ro­mantic man­ner, from a lady who owes to him the hap­pi­ness of her life. This, briefly, is his story. Some years ago, he loved a young Rus­sian lady, of mod­er­ate for­tune; and hav­ing amassed a con­sid­er­able sum in prize-money, the father of the girl con­sen­ted to the match. He saw his mis­tress once be­fore the destined ce­re­mony; but she was bathed in tears, and, throw­ing her­self at his feet, en­treated him to spare her, con­fess­ing at the same time that she loved an­other, but that he was poor, and that her father would never con­sent to the union. My gen­er­ous friend re­as­sured the sup­pli­ant, and on be­ing in­formed of the name of her lover, in­stantly aban­doned his pur­suit. He had already bought a farm with his money, on which he had de­signed to pass the re­mainder of his life; but he be­stowed the whole on his rival, to­gether with the re­mains of his prize-money to pur­chase stock, and then him­self so­li­cited the young wo­man’s father to con­sent to her mar­riage with her lover. But the old man de­cidedly re­fused, think­ing him­self bound in hon­our to my friend; who, when he found the father in­ex­or­able, quit­ted his coun­try, nor re­turned un­til he heard that his former mis­tress was mar­ried ac­cord­ing to her in­clin­a­tions. “What a noble fel­low!” you will ex­claim. He is so; but then he is wholly un­educated: he is as si­lent as a Turk, and a kind of ig­nor­ant care­less­ness at­tends him, which, while it renders his con­duct the more as­ton­ish­ing, de­tracts from the in­terest and sym­pathy which oth­er­wise he would com­mand.

Yet do not sup­pose, be­cause I com­plain a little, or be­cause I can con­ceive a con­sol­a­tion for my toils which I may never know, that I am waver­ing in my res­ol­u­tions. Those are as fixed as fate; and my voy­age is only now delayed un­til the weather shall per­mit my em­bark­a­tion. The winter has been dread­fully severe; but the spring prom­ises well, and it is con­sidered as a re­mark­ably early sea­son; so that per­haps I may sail sooner than I ex­pec­ted. I shall do noth­ing rashly: you know me suf­fi­ciently to con­fide in my prudence and con­sid­er­ate­ness, whenever the safety of oth­ers is com­mit­ted to my care.

I can­not de­scribe to you my sen­sa­tions on the near pro­spect of my un­der­tak­ing. It is im­possible to com­mu­nic­ate to you a con­cep­tion of the trem­bling sen­sa­tion, half pleas­ur­able and half fear­ful, with which I am pre­par­ing to de­part. I am go­ing to un­ex­plored re­gions, to “the land of mist and snow”; but I shall kill no al­batross, there­fore do not be alarmed for my safety, or if I should come back to you as worn and woful as the “An­cient Mar­iner”? You will smile at my al­lu­sion; but I will dis­close a secret. I have of­ten at­trib­uted my at­tach­ment to, my pas­sion­ate en­thu­si­asm for, the dan­ger­ous mys­ter­ies of ocean, to that pro­duc­tion of the most ima­gin­at­ive of mod­ern po­ets. There is some­thing at work in my soul, which I do not un­der­stand. I am prac­tic­ally in­dus­tri­ous—painstak­ing;—a work­man to ex­ecute with per­sever­ance and la­bour:—but be­sides this, there is a love for the mar­vel­lous, a be­lief in the mar­vel­lous, in­ter­twined in all my pro­jects, which hur­ries me out of the com­mon path­ways of men, even to the wild sea and un­vis­ited re­gions I am about to ex­plore.

But to re­turn to dearer con­sid­er­a­tions. Shall I meet you again, after hav­ing tra­versed im­mense seas, and re­turned by the most south­ern cape of Africa or Amer­ica? I dare not ex­pect such suc­cess, yet I can­not bear to look on the re­verse of the pic­ture. Continue for the present to write to me by every op­por­tun­ity: I may re­ceive your let­ters on some oc­ca­sions when I need them most to sup­port my spir­its. I love you very ten­derly. Re­mem­ber me with af­fec­tion, should you never hear from me again.

Your af­fec­tion­ate brother,

Robert Walton.

Letter III

To Mrs. Saville, Eng­land.

July 7th, 17—.

My dear sis­ter—I write a few lines in haste, to say that I am safe, and well ad­vanced on my voy­age. This let­ter will reach Eng­land by a mer­chant­man now on its home­ward voy­age from Archangel; more for­tu­nate than I, who may not see my nat­ive land, per­haps, for many years. I am, how­ever, in good spir­its: my men are bold, and ap­par­ently firm of pur­pose; nor do the float­ing sheets of ice that con­tinu­ally pass us, in­dic­at­ing the dangers of the re­gion to­wards which we are ad­van­cing, ap­pear to dis­may them. We have already reached a very high lat­it­ude; but it is the height of sum­mer, and al­though not so warm as in Eng­land, the south­ern gales, which blow us speedily to­wards those shores which I so ar­dently de­sire to at­tain, breathe a de­gree of renov­at­ing warmth which I had not ex­pec­ted.

No in­cid­ents have hitherto be­fallen us that would make a fig­ure in a let­ter. One or two stiff gales, and the spring­ing of a leak, are ac­ci­dents which ex­per­i­enced nav­ig­at­ors scarcely re­mem­ber to re­cord; and I shall be well con­tent if noth­ing worse hap­pen to us dur­ing our voy­age.

Adieu, my dear Mar­garet. Be as­sured, that for my own sake, as well as yours, I will not rashly en­counter danger. I will be cool, per­sever­ing, and prudent.

But suc­cess shall crown my en­deav­ours. Where­fore not? Thus far I have gone, tra­cing a se­cure way over the path­less seas: the very stars them­selves be­ing wit­nesses and testi­mon­ies of my tri­umph. Why not still pro­ceed over the un­tamed yet obed­i­ent ele­ment? What can stop the de­term­ined heart and re­solved will of man?

My swell­ing heart in­vol­un­tar­ily pours it­self out thus. But I must fin­ish. Heaven bless my be­loved sis­ter!

Most af­fec­tion­ately yours,

R. W.

Letter IV

To Mrs. Saville, Eng­land.

August 5th, 17—.

So strange an ac­ci­dent has happened to us, that I can­not for­bear re­cord­ing it, al­though it is very prob­able that you will see me be­fore these pa­pers can come into your pos­ses­sion.

Last Monday (July 31st), we were nearly sur­roun­ded by ice, which closed in the ship on all sides, scarcely leav­ing her the sea-room in which she floated. Our situ­ation was some­what dan­ger­ous, es­pe­cially as we were com­passed round by a very thick fog. We ac­cord­ingly lay to, hop­ing that some change would take place in the at­mo­sphere and weather.

About two o’clock the mist cleared away, and we be­held, stretched out in every dir­ec­tion, vast and ir­reg­u­lar plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my com­rades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watch­ful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight sud­denly at­trac­ted our at­ten­tion, and di­ver­ted our so­li­citude from our own situ­ation. We per­ceived a low car­riage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on to­wards the north, at the dis­tance of half a mile: a be­ing which had the shape of a man, but ap­par­ently of gi­gantic stature, sat in the sledge, and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid pro­gress of the trav­el­ler with our tele­scopes, un­til he was lost among the dis­tant in­equal­it­ies of the ice.

This ap­pear­ance ex­cited our un­qual­i­fied won­der. We were, as we be­lieved, many hun­dred miles from any land; but this ap­par­i­tion seemed to de­note that it was not, in real­ity, so dis­tant as we had sup­posed. Shut in, how­ever, by ice, it was im­possible to fol­low his track, which we had ob­served with the greatest at­ten­tion.

About two hours after this oc­cur­rence, we heard the ground sea; and be­fore night the ice broke, and freed our ship. We, how­ever, lay to un­til the morn­ing, fear­ing to en­counter in the dark those large loose masses which float about after the break­ing up of the ice. I profited of this time to rest for a few hours.

In the morn­ing, how­ever, as soon as it was light, I went upon deck, and found all the sail­ors busy on one side of the ves­sel, ap­par­ently talk­ing to someone in the sea. It was, in fact, a sledge, like that we had seen be­fore, which had drif­ted to­wards us in the night, on a large frag­ment of ice. Only one dog re­mained alive; but there was a hu­man be­ing within it, whom the sail­ors were per­suad­ing to enter the ves­sel. He was not, as the other trav­el­ler seemed to be, a sav­age in­hab­it­ant of some un­dis­covered is­land, but an European. When I ap­peared on deck, the mas­ter said, “Here is our cap­tain, and he will not al­low you to per­ish on the open sea.”

On per­ceiv­ing me, the stranger ad­dressed me in Eng­lish, al­though with a for­eign ac­cent. “Be­fore I come on board your ves­sel,” said he, “will you have the kind­ness to in­form me whither you are bound?”

You may con­ceive my as­ton­ish­ment on hear­ing such a ques­tion ad­dressed to me from a man on the brink of de­struc­tion, and to whom I should have sup­posed that my ves­sel would have been a re­source which he would not have ex­changed for the most pre­cious wealth the earth can af­ford. I replied, how­ever, that we were on a voy­age of dis­cov­ery to­wards the north­ern pole.

Upon hear­ing this he ap­peared sat­is­fied, and con­sen­ted to come on board. Good God! Mar­garet, if you had seen the man who thus ca­pit­u­lated for his safety, your sur­prise would have been bound­less. His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dread­fully ema­ci­ated by fa­tigue and suf­fer­ing. I never saw a man in so wretched a con­di­tion. We at­temp­ted to carry him into the cabin; but as soon as he had quit­ted the fresh air, he fain­ted. We ac­cord­ingly brought him back to the deck, and re­stored him to an­im­a­tion by rub­bing him with brandy, and for­cing him to swal­low a small quant­ity. As soon as he showed signs of life we wrapped him up in blankets, and placed him near the chim­ney of the kit­chen stove. By slow de­grees he re­covered, and ate a little soup, which re­stored him won­der­fully.

Two days passed in this man­ner be­fore he was able to speak; and I of­ten feared that his suf­fer­ings had de­prived him of un­der­stand­ing. When he had in some meas­ure re­covered, I re­moved him to my own cabin, and at­ten­ded on him as much as my duty would per­mit. I never saw a more in­ter­est­ing creature: his eyes have gen­er­ally an ex­pres­sion of wild­ness, and even mad­ness; but there are mo­ments when, if any­one per­forms an act of kind­ness to­wards him, or does him any the most tri­fling ser­vice, his whole coun­ten­ance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of be­ne­vol­ence and sweet­ness that I never saw equalled. But he is gen­er­ally mel­an­choly and des­pair­ing; and some­times he gnashes his teeth, as if im­pa­tient of the weight of woes that op­presses him.

When my guest was a little re­covered, I had great trouble to keep off the men, who wished to ask him a thou­sand ques­tions; but I would not al­low him to be tor­men­ted by their idle curi­os­ity, in a state of body and mind whose res­tor­a­tion evid­ently de­pended upon en­tire re­pose. Once, how­ever, the lieu­ten­ant asked, Why he had come so far upon the ice in so strange a vehicle?

His coun­ten­ance in­stantly as­sumed an as­pect of the deep­est gloom; and he replied, “To seek one who fled from me.”

“And did the man whom you pur­sued travel in the same fash­ion?”

“Yes.”

“Then I fancy we have seen him; for the day be­fore we picked you up, we saw some dogs draw­ing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice.”

This aroused the stranger’s at­ten­tion; and he asked a mul­ti­tude of ques­tions con­cern­ing the route which the dæ­mon, as he called him, had pur­sued. Soon after, when he was alone with me, he said, “I have, doubt­less, ex­cited your curi­os­ity, as well as that of these good people; but you are too con­sid­er­ate to make en­quir­ies.”

“Cer­tainly; it would in­deed be very im­per­tin­ent and in­hu­man in me to trouble you with any in­quis­it­ive­ness of mine.”

“And yet you res­cued me from a strange and per­il­ous situ­ation; you have be­ne­vol­ently re­stored me to life.”

Soon after this he en­quired if I thought that the break­ing up of the ice had des­troyed the other sledge? I replied, that I could not an­swer with any de­gree of cer­tainty; for the ice had not broken un­til near mid­night, and the trav­el­ler might have ar­rived at a place of safety be­fore that time; but of this I could not judge.

From this time a new spirit of life an­im­ated the de­cay­ing frame of the stranger. He mani­fes­ted the greatest eager­ness to be upon deck, to watch for the sledge which had be­fore ap­peared; but I have per­suaded him to re­main in the cabin, for he is far too weak to sus­tain the raw­ness of the at­mo­sphere. I have prom­ised that someone should watch for him, and give him in­stant no­tice if any new ob­ject should ap­pear in sight.

Such is my journal of what relates to this strange oc­cur­rence up to the present day. The stranger has gradu­ally im­proved in health, but is very si­lent, and ap­pears un­easy when any­one ex­cept my­self enters his cabin. Yet his man­ners are so con­cili­at­ing and gentle, that the sail­ors are all in­ter­ested in him, al­though they have had very little com­mu­nic­a­tion with him. For my own part, I be­gin to love him as a brother; and his con­stant and deep grief fills me with sym­pathy and com­pas­sion. He must have been a noble creature in his bet­ter days, be­ing even now in wreck so at­tract­ive and ami­able.

I said in one of my let­ters, my dear Mar­garet, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, be­fore his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have pos­sessed as the brother of my heart.

I shall con­tinue my journal con­cern­ing the stranger at in­ter­vals, should I have any fresh in­cid­ents to re­cord.

August 13th, 17—.

My af­fec­tion for my guest in­creases every day. He ex­cites at once my ad­mir­a­tion and my pity to an as­ton­ish­ing de­gree. How can I see so noble a creature des­troyed by misery, without feel­ing the most poignant grief? He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cul­tiv­ated; and when he speaks, al­though his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapid­ity and un­par­alleled elo­quence.

He is now much re­covered from his ill­ness, and is con­tinu­ally on the deck, ap­par­ently watch­ing for the sledge that pre­ceded his own. Yet, al­though un­happy, he is not so ut­terly oc­cu­pied by his own misery, but that he in­terests him­self deeply in the pro­jects of oth­ers. He has fre­quently con­versed with me on mine, which I have com­mu­nic­ated to him without dis­guise. He entered at­tent­ively into all my ar­gu­ments in fa­vour of my even­tual suc­cess, and into every minute de­tail of the meas­ures I had taken to se­cure it. I was eas­ily led by the sym­pathy which he evinced, to use the lan­guage of my heart; to give ut­ter­ance to the burn­ing ar­dour of my soul; and to say, with all the fer­vour that warmed me, how gladly I would sac­ri­fice my for­tune, my ex­ist­ence, my every hope, to the fur­ther­ance of my en­ter­prise. One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the ac­quire­ment of the know­ledge which I sought; for the domin­ion I should ac­quire and trans­mit over the ele­mental foes of our race. As I spoke, a dark gloom spread over my listener’s coun­ten­ance. At first I per­ceived that he tried to sup­press his emo­tion; he placed his hands be­fore his eyes; and my voice quivered and failed me, as I be­held tears trickle fast from between his fin­gers—a groan burst from his heav­ing breast. I paused;—at length he spoke, in broken ac­cents:—“Un­happy man! Do you share my mad­ness? Have you drank also of the in­tox­ic­at­ing draught? Hear me—let me re­veal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!”

Such words, you may ima­gine, strongly ex­cited my curi­os­ity; but the par­oxysm of grief that had seized the stranger over­came his weakened powers, and many hours of re­pose and tran­quil con­ver­sa­tion were ne­ces­sary to re­store his com­pos­ure.

Hav­ing conquered the vi­ol­ence of his feel­ings, he ap­peared to des­pise him­self for be­ing the slave of pas­sion; and quelling the dark tyranny of des­pair, he led me again to con­verse con­cern­ing my­self per­son­ally. He asked me the his­tory of my earlier years. The tale was quickly told: but it awakened vari­ous trains of re­flec­tion. I spoke of my de­sire of find­ing a friend—of my thirst for a more in­tim­ate sym­pathy with a fel­low mind than had ever fallen to my lot; and ex­pressed my con­vic­tion that a man could boast of little hap­pi­ness, who did not en­joy this bless­ing.

“I agree with you,” replied the stranger; “we are un­fash­ioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, bet­ter, dearer than ourselves—such a friend ought to be—do not lend his aid to per­fec­tion­ate our weak and faulty natures. I once had a friend, the most noble of hu­man creatures, and am en­titled, there­fore, to judge re­spect­ing friend­ship. You have hope, and the world be­fore you, and have no cause for des­pair. But I—I have lost everything, and can­not be­gin life anew.”

As he said this, his coun­ten­ance be­came ex­press­ive of a calm settled grief, that touched me to the heart. But he was si­lent, and presently re­tired to his cabin.

Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beau­ties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight af­forded by these won­der­ful re­gions, seems still to have the power of el­ev­at­ing his soul from earth. Such a man has a double ex­ist­ence: he may suf­fer misery, and be over­whelmed by dis­ap­point­ments; yet, when he has re­tired into him­self, he will be like a ce­les­tial spirit, that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ven­tures.

Will you smile at the en­thu­si­asm I ex­press con­cern­ing this di­vine wan­derer? You would not, if you saw him. You have been tutored and re­fined by books and re­tire­ment from the world, and you are, there­fore, some­what fas­ti­di­ous; but this only renders you the more fit to ap­pre­ci­ate the ex­traordin­ary mer­its of this won­der­ful man. So­me­times I have en­deav­oured to dis­cover what qual­ity it is which he pos­sesses, that el­ev­ates him so im­meas­ur­ably above any other per­son I ever knew. I be­lieve it to be an in­tu­it­ive dis­cern­ment; a quick but never-fail­ing power of judg­ment; a pen­et­ra­tion into the causes of things, un­equalled for clear­ness and pre­ci­sion; add to this a fa­cil­ity of ex­pres­sion, and a voice whose var­ied in­ton­a­tions are soul-sub­du­ing mu­sic.

August 19th, 17—.

Yes­ter­day the stranger said to me, “You may eas­ily per­ceive, Cap­tain Walton, that I have suffered great and un­par­alleled mis­for­tunes. I had de­term­ined, at one time, that the memory of these evils should die with me; but you have won me to al­ter my de­term­in­a­tion. You seek for know­ledge and wis­dom, as I once did; and I ar­dently hope that the grat­i­fic­a­tion of your wishes may not be a ser­pent to sting you, as mine has been. I do not know that the re­la­tion of my dis­asters will be use­ful to you; yet, when I re­flect that you are pur­su­ing the same course, ex­pos­ing your­self to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I ima­gine that you may de­duce an apt moral from my tale; one that may dir­ect you if you suc­ceed in your un­der­tak­ing, and con­sole you in case of fail­ure. Pre­pare to hear of oc­cur­rences which are usu­ally deemed mar­vel­lous. Were we among the tamer scenes of nature, I might fear to en­counter your un­be­lief, per­haps your ri­dicule; but many things will ap­pear pos­sible in these wild and mys­ter­i­ous re­gions, which would pro­voke the laughter of those un­ac­quain­ted with the ever-var­ied powers of nature:—nor can I doubt but that my tale con­veys in its series in­ternal evid­ence of the truth of the events of which it is com­posed.”

You may eas­ily ima­gine that I was much grat­i­fied by the offered com­mu­nic­a­tion; yet I could not en­dure that he should re­new his grief by a re­cital of his mis­for­tunes. I felt the greatest eager­ness to hear the prom­ised nar­rat­ive, partly from curi­os­ity, and partly from a strong de­sire to ameli­or­ate his fate, if it were in my power. I ex­pressed these feel­ings in my an­swer.

“I thank you,” he replied, “for your sym­pathy, but it is use­less; my fate is nearly ful­filled. I wait but for one event, and then I shall re­pose in peace. I un­der­stand your feel­ing,” con­tin­ued he, per­ceiv­ing that I wished to in­ter­rupt him; “but you are mis­taken, my friend, if thus you will al­low me to name you; noth­ing can al­ter my des­tiny: listen to my his­tory, and you will per­ceive how ir­re­voc­ably it is de­term­ined.”

He then told me, that he would com­mence his nar­rat­ive the next day when I should be at leis­ure. This prom­ise drew from me the warmest thanks. I have re­solved every night, when I am not im­per­at­ively oc­cu­pied by my du­ties, to re­cord, as nearly as pos­sible in his own words, what he has re­lated dur­ing the day. If I should be en­gaged, I will at least make notes. This ma­nu­script will doubt­less af­ford you the greatest pleas­ure: but to me, who know him, and who hear it from his own lips, with what in­terest and sym­pathy shall I read it in some fu­ture day! Even now, as I com­mence my task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears; his lus­trous eyes dwell on me with all their mel­an­choly sweet­ness; I see his thin hand raised in an­im­a­tion, while the lin­ea­ments of his face are ir­ra­di­ated by the soul within. Strange and har­row­ing must be his story; fright­ful the storm which em­braced the gal­lant ves­sel on its course, and wrecked it—thus!