"Life is a dark riddle," said he, smiting his breast.
And he walked slowly on, gained the recess where he had stood several nights before with Helen; and dizzy with want of food, and worn out for want of sleep, he sank down into the dark corner; while the river that rolled under the arch of stone muttered dirge-like in his ear;--as under the social key-stone wails and rolls on for ever the mystery of Human Discontent. Take comfort, O Thinker by the stream! 'Tis the river that founded and gave pomp to the city; and without the discontent, where were progress--what were Man? Take comfort, O Thinker! wherever the stream over which thou bendest, or beside which thou sinkest, weary and desolate, frets the arch that supports thee;--never dream that, by destroying the bridge, thou canst silence the moan of the wave!
[19] Fact. In a work by M. GIBERT, a celebrated French physician, on diseases of the skin, he states that that minute troublesome kind of rash, known by the name of _prurigo_, though not dangerous in itself, has often driven the individual afflicted by it to--suicide. I believe that our more varying climate, and our more heating drinks and ailments, render the skin complaint more common in England than in France, yet I doubt if any English physician could state that it had ever driven one of his _English_ patients to suicide.