Publisher's Synopsis
MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch-as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?-from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars-in the character of the family mansion-in the frescos of the chief saloon-in the tapestries of the dormitories-in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory-but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings-in the fashion of the library chamber-and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents-there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
