in pieces the thunderbolts of Jove, is a proud but generous tyrant. It is but seldom that he condescends to assert his power over the breast of man. But when he does,-sauve qui peut. The burning of Moscow was a mere joke to the flame he kindles within; but of this more hereafter.

It is Moore, I think, who tells us that "love is heaven, and heaven is love." It may be so, the more especially as we know for certain that "there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage;" a ceremony which, if it were allowed to take place, would of course render the poet's intelligence erroneous. But let this be as it may, (although I hope the time will come when we shall all have an opportunity of ascertaining its truth,) it is at all events indubitable, that to be in love is to be at the height of all earthly felicity. In love!-how can any dull pen write the words without breaking forth into the enraptured language of enthusiasm and delight!

"They lov'd; they were belov'd. Oh, happiness!

I have said all that can be said of bliss,
In saying that they loved!"

Among which of the wilds of Kamschatka, in what desert of Otaheite, shall I find a barbarian rude enough to deny a truth so simply but powerfully expressed? Where is the being so dead to all the finer feelings of humanity, as to confess that his heart is without the chord that vibrates to the touch of love, and spontaneously discourses "most eloquent music?" In love!-Does not the phrase spread a halo of immortal light round the imagination? Does it not conjure up before us, in bright array, all the fairest scenes of Nature? Does it not awaken a long train of almost more than mortal associations? Does it not transport us to the woods, and streams, and sunny skies of Greece, and place us in the midst of the Naiads, and Oreads, and Sylvan Fauns? Does not Pan pipe beside us in the grove, whilst the white garments and flowery chaplets of Arcadian girls glitter among the trees, and all is song, and dance, and smiles? But why travel back into ancient times? Who is there who will turn his back up the stream of life, and visit the

fairy haunts, through which he himself has sailed, that will not again call into birth the thrill of awakened emotion which love produced-long dormant, perhaps, but never entirely forgotten? Does he not see that he has left behind him moments of delight, such as he may never again experience? Does he not remember bright eyes that once gazed on him in all the confiding tenderness of early years, and light hearts, whose every pulse beat in unison with his own? Then it is he feels what a store of wealth there is in the fresh and joyous bosom of youth, and, sighing, he confesses that neither the lofty aspirations of ambition, nor the dazzling splendour of success, compensate the loss of the first wild witcheries of young and innocent existence. Once more, once more, he exclaims, give me back the gay morning of life;

"Its clouds and its tears are worth

evening's best light."

But this is knowledge which experience alone can give ; and the constantly recurring hope, that the future will excel both the past and the present, long postpones the time when the discovery is made. Many, too, flutter about from flower to flower, always imagining that the next will be fairer and sweeter than the last. Such men know not that love is a grave, a deep, an absorbing passion, and that when it once takes possession of the heart" sedet, aeternumque sedebit." They know not that love has nothing to do either with blue eyes or auburn hair, and that a girl who is merely (in their own phrase)" a glorious girl," can never inspire it. They think themselves in love when their pulse is at a hundred instead of sixty. They forget that this may be ardour; it may be fire; it may be the rate at which the blood should flow in preparation for " burning sighs” and “lava kisses"-any thing, in short, but love. Yet it is all the love with which they are acquainted. Like a wisp of straw, it blazes away most heroically, and is consumed in its own flames. But let me not blame too severely, for I was myself, for a long while, as ignorant of the matter as the worst of them.

I was not fourteen when I first took it into my head to fall in love. Before that period, I had read my way through half-a-dozen circulating libraries. Every thing that bore upon its title-page the name of tale, novel, or romance, I had greedily swallowed. I stuck at nothing. With the most delightful indifference to all the beauties, either of composition, taste, or judgment, I had plodded on, page after page, chapter after chapter, and volume after volume, through a whole Bodleian of works of fiction. The common amusements in which boys find so much delight were to me without interest. A match at foot-ball or cricket had no charms to win me from "The Mysterious Freebooter," or "The Castles of Athlin and Dunblane." Neither angling nor skating had power to charm me from the "Mysteries of Udolpho," or "The One-handed Monk." Nay, all school learning appeared to me contemptible. What was Horace and Virgil, when compared with "Thaddeus of Warsaw," and "St. Hillary the Crusader?" Hellen of Troy, and Dido of Carthage, were they for a moment to be put in competition with "Julia Rosenberg,' or "Anna, Countess of Castle Powell?" Neglecting, therefore, all other attainments, and having my mind, in consequence, pretty tolerably endued with all the precious lore of sentimental milliners, it is not to be wondered that I thought, a little sooner than usual, of turning my knowledge to some account, and of advancing from theory to practice.

"

Yet, before descending to particulars, let me not dismiss, with nothing but a sneer, those days of early romance, and unsophisticated, harmless, unhesitating credulity. Alas! the stern truths of reality force themselves but too soon upon the mind. Too soon must we turn from that which might or should be, to that which is ;-too soon must we grapple with the world, and see the rainbow visions of youth" evanishing amid the storm.' In the pride of its awakened energies, the mind may rejoice to break through the mists of error by which it was surrounded. Too soon will it find that it was only through the medium of these very mists that the creations of the ma VOL. XV.

"

terial world were seen arrayed in the fairy colours of enchantment. It is true, that the " Mysteries of Udolpho" have now ceased to charm ; the Black Forest" possesses no longer its wild attractions; and one of the common-place houses in GeorgeStreet or Charlotte Square holds a higher place in my esteem than the Castles either of Athlin or Dunblane. But shall I say that I am therefore happier? Do I find in the speculation of a Locke or a Stewart, or in the sober histories of a Hume or a Robertson, greater delight than I did of old in the wonderful imaginings of a Radcliffe or a Lathom? Öh no! Give me back the days when I believed in all things wild and strange, as firmly as I now do in political jobbing and religious hypocrisy. Ah! "These-these were the times," as Dame Quickly said to Goldsmith, when the fancy was ready to take for granted every thing it wished to consider true. I have sailed along the shores of Languedoc,-I have descended in the valleys of Switzerland,-I have sat in the solitary chateau,-I have gone out to the glorious fight with the scarf of my Adelaide for a banner,-I have mingled in the battle,-I have returned victorious,― I have been met with smiles,-I have revelled in the bosom of love;-and after all this, oh, ye heavenly muses! must I open my eyes upon the world, -must I move along the streets,— must I be jostled by every unidea'd mechanic,-must I eat, and drink, and sleep, like the other animals around me,-must the cherished source of my happiness drop away like an icicle in the sunshine? Am I indeed an author, one of that nameless tribe who write in Magazines, and whose lucubrations live but for a month, and are then forgotten for ever? It is even so; and not being able to change the course of Nature, the sooner I bring this digression to a conclusion the better.

I fell in love, as I was saying, at fourteen, that is, I thought I fell in love. It was, of course, no more love than it was the typhus fever. I had gone to visit my uncle in the country, and when there, I had been guilty of a sonnet. Being the first effort of the kind, it was, of course, addressed to the moon, but, somehow or other, 3 N

I had contrived to introduce in the two last lines a very complimentary allusion to the "fair Matilda,”—the name, as it happened, of my uncle's only daughter. Nothing was farther from my intention than that Matilda should see this opus inaugurale; but, in spite of my precautions, she did accidentally get her hands upon it, and being about as good a judge as I was a writer of poetry, she scrupled not to declare that it was the sweetest thing of the sort she had ever read. Many a deep blush did her praises cost me, for in those days blushes were with me more frequent than smiles. Matilda was three years older than I. But she was very pretty, and very good-natured. She laughed, indeed, too much; but then her teeth were the finest I ever remember to have seen. The flattery she bestowed upon me was not, I believe, meant as such; and, though I myself felt secretly convinced that it was somewhat extravagant, I could not bring myself to like it the less on that account.

Of all sorts of praise, that which comes from the lips of women is the most intoxicating. The commendations obtained by youth from experienced age, the applause bestowed upon the courageous soldier on the field of battle, the loud acclamations that ring in the ear of the successful orator, the delightful words of approbation and encouragement that flow so sparingly from the cautious pen of the critic, and shine before an author's eyes like sunbeams, -all are nothing when set in competition with the soft accents of indulgent woman. No one thinks of her capacity to judge, but, satisfied with having afforded her pleasure, he dreams not of inquiring whether his talents are fit for higher things. Preferring, both to military renown and sovereign power, the compliments paid him by Cleopatra, Antony lost the dominion of the world. Had Antony been a writer of sonnets, as I was, he would never have thought of contending for it.

When I returned to town, Matilda still reigned paramount in my imagination. I had written more sonnets, and Matilda had given them yet higher praise. Besides, I had saved her once from the menaced at

tack of a bull,-I had helped her over at least a dozen stiles, and about as many ditches,-I had once stood beside her, under a tree, during a thunder-storm,-and twice, when her horse had become unruly, and would have run off with her, I had succeeded in stopping him. If all this was not enough to make a reasonable man in love, I know not what was. True, I had never "told my love," and true, also, Matilda had not the most distant idea of its existence. But what then? In the very spirit of romance, I said to myself, that time would, sooner or later, effect the denouement. And so it did, for in about three months afterwards"Oh most lame and impotent conclusion!"-Matilda was married to a biped of the name of Ogilvie, who, by the help of a bit of red cloth, and the honourable title of Captain, had made an irresistible impression on her heart; and yet I never heard that he had written a sonnet in his life.

This was a blow which it cost me some little time to get the better of. Yet, after all, I must confess that it was a wound given to my vanity, not to my heart. It rather shocked my confidence, too, in the truth of romance. It was against all rule. Here was a tale of true love brought to a most unsatisfactory conclusion, before you had got to the middle of the first volume. I could not comprehend it. It made me melancholy ; and for more than six weeks many a bright eye smiled on me in vain.

But a youth of fifteen is not exactly at the age when he can shut himself up against all the allurements of beauty. On the contrary, it is from that period, till he reaches his seventeenth or eighteenth year, that he entertains nobler and more exalted notions of the sex than he has ever done before, or will ever do again. I say of the sex, for it is of the sex he thinks, and not of individuals. To him the term "woman" comprehends all that is best and fairest in human nature. He studies the descriptions of the poets, and he does not suspect them of exaggeration. His belief is founded on faith: he knows not that a very few years of experience will make him an infidel for ever.

For my own part, the time is not so long past that I should have forgotten already the day-dreams of an Arcadian world-a new Saturnian age-in which I once indulged. I have been a dreamer, in truth, from my youth upwards. Glorious thoughts have passed through my faucy; thrilling hopes have for a moment started into life, and, like the bubbles that glance in the mountain-stream, have passed away again as things that never were. Is it not thus with thousands? Who is there who have gazed upon the golden clouds of evening, the blue depths of the starry sky, the short-lived rainbows of spring, the gentle undulations and little rippling waves of a summer sea,—the flowers that decorate the glade or mountain with their bells and blossoms, the glittering streams, the waving fields,-the green or yellow woods,-and, above all, who is there who has watched the ever-varying expression of "the human face divine," without experiencing within him emotions undescribed, and without a name, but, nevertheless, instinct with immortality, and, though soon forgotten on earth, destined to be again awakened in heaven?

For three years after the loss of Matilda, the worship which I paid at the shrine of female excellence was as orthodox as Venus herself could have desired. I never once took it into my head to doubt the existence of those perfections which women were universally described as possessing by all the authors I had ever consulted on the subject. To have questioned their accuracy would have made me miserable. My brain was enveloped in an impenetrable cloud of romance and poetry. I lived in an ideal world of my own, and I have never lived so happily since. My heart was the most susceptible one I ever knew. I never went to a public place or a private party,-I never walked along the streets, or sauntered through the country, without see ing a face which I devoutly believed had made an indelible impression on my affections. Its influence sometimes continued unimpaired for a whole week. The course of these attachments was generally this: At the theatre, for example, a young

lady in the stage-box caught my attention; she was dressed, not showily, but tastefully; instead of a belt of amonds, her dark hair, parted across a brow whose purity rivalled the Parian marble, was decorated only with a wreath of roses; a world of soul beamned from her face; and I would have looked upon the man as a semi-barbarian, guilty of high treason against the sovereign power of beauty, who would have hinted that there was another being equally lovely through all the creation. If the play was a tragedy, I watched her weep,-if a comedy, I basked in the sunshine of her smiles. Next day, after a sleepless night, I hurried from street to street, from square to square, fondly hoping that she might pass me either on foot or in a carriage; or that, if neither of these events took place, I might at least catch a glimpse of her at a window. My wild-goose chase commonly ended where it began. During the second day, I wandered through the fields, writing sonnets to the unknown. On the third, I meditated on the hard-heartedness of Fortune, and thought of the happiness which might have been. On the fourth, I dined out, and the lady who sat next me at table was the goddess I had seen at the theatre; I of course talked with no one else. On the fifth, I recollected that she had spoken of nothing but quadrilles, the Author of Waverley's last novel, and Moore's songs. On the sixth, I began to doubt whether her face was so expressive as I had thought, and felt satisfied that she had no romance in her composition. On the seventh, I burned some of my last sonnets, and considered it indisputable, that light hair, studded with brilliants, was far superior to the darkest ringlets enwreathed with

roses.

The time, however, was now at hand when "a change came o'er the spirit of my dreams." I was in my twentieth year, and notwithstanding all that I had written and thought about love, I had never yet known what it was. But now my feelings became concentrated, as it were, into a narrower focus. I felt the necessity of singling out some one particular object, on whom my whole heart might be bestowed. I felt that there

was something wanting to my happiness, and I was determined to surrender my freedom in good earnest, and with all possible expeditió The mere transient emotions excited by a beautiful face satisfied me no longer. I panted after something ignotum immensumque.

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Reader! I always make it a rule to speak the truth when I am speaking to you. Listen to me, therefore, when I confess, that, for the last five years, I have been roaming about the world, looking for a woman to fall in love with, as the ancient philosopher did for an honest man, and that, like him, I have not been able to find one! "Why, then, you must be tolerably difficult to please," is the idea which will in all probability first occur to you. But, my dear reader, you were never more mistaken in your life. Nobody can accuse me of being hypercritical. I have, on the contrary, been, since a boy, remarkable for what the French call an ame sensible," and I must have already satisfied you that no man was ever more willing to become the ready worshipper of the sex than I was. To speak sincerely, then, (although it costs me no little effort to commit the fact to paper,) it is the sex that has deceived me, not I who have deserted the sex. Solomon, we are told, had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and yet we well know that he pronounced the whole-" vanity and vexation of spirit." Far be it from me to compare myself with Solomon, either in this or any other respect; yet I may be permitted to say, that I too have had some experience in the way he mentions, and, like him, I have come to the conclusion so feelingly expressed in the old Scotch song:

"O! waly, waly, love is bonnie

A little time when it is new;
But it grows auld, and waxes cauld,

And fades away like morning dew." The haze in which romance had involved me has at length blown by. The false glare has disappeared, and I can now view objects in their true light. This can never be done during the young luxuriance of fancy. The imagination that sees castellos en Espagna even in the shepherds' huts, that builds palaces among the

clouds of an April sky,-that gathers music from the babbling of the brook or the sighing of the breeze, may well discover a paradise of charms blooming around the steps of beauty. But the hut of the shepherd is inhabited only by himself and his sheep, -the clouds of the air dissolve in rain, or vanish into vapour,-the brook is dried up by the summer sun, or swollen into a torrent by the winter flood,

and the paradise around the steps of beauty withers away with its imaginary flowers, for the breeze swells into a tempest, and strews all its blossoms in the dust.

It were needless to detail the gradual progress of that disenchantment which, sooner or later, overtakes every heart. There are two contending powers abroad in the world,-the spirit of poetry, and the spirit of truth. The one reigns supreme for the first eighteen or twenty years of existence; the other assumes the ascendancy for all the remaining period of life. Under the sway of the first, we spend one long day of sunshine; under that of the second,

"The heart is chill'd and sear'd, and

taught to wear

That falsest of false things-a mask of smiles,

While every pulse throbs at the memory Of that which has been."

The boasted advantages of experience all end in this. They force us, no doubt, to know the truth; but those truths are many of them such, that it were happier for us could we remain ignorant of them for ever. Among other things, they lead us to this conclusion, that woman, taking the species en masse, such as education, and other circumstances, have made it, is more than twenty degrees lower in the scale of creation than man!

I know to what this declaration exposes me. I already hear the epithets ringing in my ear, with which he who ventures upon such ticklish ground is sure to be assailed. I am fully aware of the power possessed by the enemies I shall thus create, and I recollect that every Erinnys is faeminei generis. But still I can say with King Lear, "blow, winds, and crack your cheeks," for I have taken