English Other General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters

But, as matters now were, I felt myself (and, having a decided tendency towards the actual, I never liked to feel it) getting quite -------------------out of my reckoning, --------------------with regard to the existing state of the world. I was beginning to lose the sense of what kind of a world it was, among innumerable schemes of what it might or ought to be. It was impossible, situated as we were, not to imbibe the idea that everything in nature and human existence was fluid, or fast becoming so; that the crust of the earth in many places was broken, and its whole surface portentously upheaving; that it was a day of crisis, and that we ourselves were in the critical vortex.