midnight
For what purpose , too , had I devoted myself to the service of men ? As I grew more sensible of the labour of pursuing , I saw more of the inutility of accomplishing , individual measures . There is one great and moving order of events which we may retard , but we can not arrest , and to which , if we endeavour to hasten them , we only give a dangerous and unnatural impetus . Often , when in the fever of the midnight , I have paused from my unshared and unsoftened studies , to listen to the deadly pulsation of my heart , -- -LSB- Falkland suffered much , from very early youth , from a complaint in his heart -RSB- -- when I have felt in its painful and tumultuous beating the very life waning and wasting within me , I have sickened to my inmost soul to remember that , amongst all those whom I was exhausting the health and enjoyment of youth to benefit , there was not one for whom my life had an interest , or by whom my death would be honoured by a tear . There is a beautiful passage in Chalmers on the want of sympathy we experience in the world . From my earliest childhood I had one deep , engrossing , yearning desire , -- and that was to love and to be loved . I found , too young , the realisation of that dream -- it passed !