Itself, by itself, solely, one everlastingly, and single.
WITH a feeling of deep yet most singular affection I regarded my friend Morella. Thrown
by accident into her society many years ago, my soul from our first meeting, burned with
fires it had never before known; but the fires were not of Eros, and bitter and tormenting
to my spirit was the gradual conviction that I could in no manner define their unusual
meaning or regulate their vague intensity. Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the
altar, and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however, shunned society,
and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder; it is a
happiness to dream.
Morella's erudition was profound. As I hope to live, her talents were of no common
order --- her powers of mind were gigantic. I felt this, and, in many matters, became her
pupil. I soon, however, found that, perhaps on account of her Presburg education, she
placed before me a number of those mystical writings which are usually considered the
mere dross of the early German literature. These, for what reason I could not imagine,
were her favourite and constant study --- and that in process of time they became my
own, should be attributed to the simple but effectual influence of habit and example.
In all this, if I err not, my reason had little to do. My convictions, or I forget myself,
were in no manner acted upon by the ideal, nor was any tincture of the mysticism which I
read to be discovered, unless I am greatly mistaken, either in my deeds or in my thoughts.
Persuaded of this, I abandoned myself implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered
with an unflinching heart into the intricacies of her studies. And then --- then, when
poring over forbidden pages, I felt a forbidden spirit enkindling within me --- would
Morella place her cold hand upon my own, and rake up from the ashes of a dead
philosophy some low, singular words, whose strange meaning burned themselves in upon
my memory. And then, hour after hour, would I linger by her side, and dwell upon the
music of her voice, until at length its melody was tainted with terror, and there fell a
shadow upon my soul, and I grew pale, and shuddered inwardly at those too unearthly
tones. And thus, joy suddenly faded into horror, and the most beautiful became the most
hideous, as Hinnom became Gehenna.
It is unnecessary to state the exact character of those disquisitions which, growing out
of the volumes I have mentioned, formed, for so long a time, almost the sole conversation
of Morella and myself. By the learned in what might be termed theological morality they
will be readily conceived, and by the unlearned they would, at all events, be little
understood. The wild Pantheism of Fichte; the modified Paliggenedia of the
Pythagoreans; and, above all, the doctrines of Identity as urged by Schelling, were
generally the points of discussion presenting the most of beauty to the imaginative
Morella. That identity which is termed personal, Mr. Locke, I think, truly defines to
consist in the saneness of rational being. And since by person we understand an
