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I sat one evening in my laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon

was just rising from the sea; I had not sufficient light for my

employment, and I remained idle, in a pause of consideration of

whether I should leave my labour for the night or hasten its

conclusion by an unremitting attention to it. As I sat, a train

of reflection occurred to me which led me to consider the effects

of what I was now doing. Three years before, I was engaged in the

same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity

had desolated my heart and filled it for ever with the bitterest

remorse. I was now about to form another being of whose

dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand

times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake,

in murder and wretchedness.