The same motive which provokes this desire in the spectator, is the parent, to a certain extent, of the very crime which has led to the exhibition.

It is the morbid appetite, which sometimes grows to madness--the creature of unregulated passions, ill-judged direction, and sometimes, even of the laws and usages of society itself, which is so much interested in the promotion of characteristics the very reverse.

It may be that I have more of this perilous stuff about me than the generality of mankind; but I am satisfied there are few of them, taught as I have been, and the prey of like influences, whose temper had been very different from mine.
The early and operating circumstances under which I grew up, all tended to the rank growth and encouragement of the more violent and vexing passions.

I was the victim of a tyranny, which, in the end, made me too a tyrant.

To feel, myself, and exercise the temper thus taught me, I had to acquire power in order to secure victims; and all my aims in life, all my desires, tended to this one pursuit.