I looked back upon all the passages and occurrences of it, as a traveller looks back upon a wilderness through which he has passed with weariness, and sorrow of heart, reaping no other fruit, of his labour, than the poor consolation that, dreary as the desert was, he has left it all behind him.

The traveller would find even this comfort considerably lessened, if, as soon as he had passed one wilderness, another of equal length, and equally desolate, should expect him.

In this particular, his experience and mine would exactly tally.

I should rejoice, indeed, that the old year is over and gone, if I had not every reason to prophesy a new one similar to it.
"The new year is already old in my account, I am not, indeed, sufficiently second-sighted to be able to boast by anticipation an acquaintance with the events of it yet unborn, but rest convinced that, be they what they may, not one of them comes a messenger of good to me.
If even death itself should be of the number, he is no friend of mine.
It is an alleviation of the woes even of an unenlightened man, that he can wish for death, and indulge a hope, at least, that in death he shall find deliverance.

But, loaded as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort as would result from a supposed probability of better things to come, were it once ended.