constancy, and left Foljambe Park with far different notions, both of persons and things, from those with which I entered it.

The adieus of the family who had been so kind to me, were of a mixed character. Mr. Hastings was stately; not cold, but too evidently condescending, though intending to be kind. His son was careless and too full of Christ Church. But Bertha was frank and lovelier than ever.

Certainly the pressure of her finger, which I was allowed to touch at parting, thrilled through my veins; and I absolutely thought I heard the tongue of heaven, when, though in the stillest possible voice, she said, "I hope when Charles returns you will come again."

What wonder then if I left them with mixed and confused emotions of misery and joy, which my young philosophy could not analyse. All that I was certain of was, as I walked with a servant bearing my bag to the place where the coach was to take me up, that my heart had a weight upon it like a load of lead, and the great gates at the end of the avenue closed upon me with a creaking noise which I thought unusual to them. They sounded horrors, and I could not help calling to mind the pathetic lamentation of Eve, on her banishment from the abode of her happiness.

"Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods?

How shall I part, and whither wander down

Into a lower world, to this obscure

And wild. How shall we breathe in other air

Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits."

In the journey home, I passed in review every

2

thing that had so pleasingly, yet so tormentingly, absorbed me, and allowed my mind to become a tumult of the happiest as well as the most despairing recollections. And yet (mark it ye young!), such is the irrepressible buoyancy of youth (ah! how far beyond all that the world can give without it!), that my despair was not without alleviation. I was not in

those regions of sorrow

"Where peace

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes,

That comes to all."

No! amid my darkest gloom at leaving what I thought paradise, I could not part with the delight of thinking I might one day return to it, and a gleam of Bertha dressed in smiles, would sometimes dissipate all the black signs of hopelessness that otherwise surrounded me.

Thus, though sunk in grief, and often in despair, to think that I had no right to expect to see Bertha again, or, if I did, that it would only be as the wife of some higher and happier being, the coach could not pass a cottage in a retired nook, with a garden of neatness like her own, but I peopled it in imagination with all that my fond fancy could indulge; in fact, with nothing short of what my wishes coveted, and my heart promised. That I might one day live in such a spot, in holy union with my beloved and latest found, was the raving of eighteen; but I felt myself a man, and as my object is to paint nature as she is actually seen and felt, I will not be deterred from confessing these weaknesses.

I recollect, indeed, the observation of a celebrated French prelate,*"It is so far from dangerous, that it

* Huet.

is even right, for young people to be made acquainted with love, in order that they may shut their senses against it when criminal, and know how to act when innocent and honourable."

I will not, therefore, fear the ridicule which may attend this account of myself, nor am I ashamed of having so early entertained a passion which, under all disadvantages, and ten thousand anxieties and temptations, kept my mind pure and my conduct correct.

On arriving at home, I am ashamed to say, every thing appeared distasteful. My father's hale heartiness, though it pleased for the moment, had not the dignity which belonged to Mr. Hastings. His clothes were coarser, and not so well made; nor was my mother either so well dressed, nor had she so smooth a manner, as Mr. Hastings's housekeeper. The brusquerie of my brothers I was rather afraid of, so only said to myself, how different their deportment was from the Etonian knowingness acquired by my friend!

But Bertha, the elegant, the vivid, the frank, the graceful, whose every feature and every motion, even without the aid of her beauty, it did one good to think of; where was she? alas! not in my homely home, nor within fifty miles of it, but in her own palace—for such · I thought the abode which was blessed with her pre

sence.

It is inconceivable what misery this folly of mine (for surely it was not less) occasioned. But I tell it, that other young fools may take warning by it, and not run the risk of shipwreck among rocks and quicksands, because they do not chuse to see them.

Still shall I confess that when I did open my eyes, though I was fully aware of the impenetrable barrier that interposed between me and my wishes, the indul

gence of them gave me sweeter enjoyments than the actual gratification of any others which I afterwards fostered. How did I not love that prettiest of all ballads, the “Wish," by Rogers! How often did I not repeat it in my walks, in my chamber, and in my bed. Though got by heart, I never stirred out without it, and I think of it now with delight, for the delight it gave me then. Rogers's more elaborate, perhaps finer poems, were not half so valued, whatever their superiority; and as, except to lovers of eighteen, it may not be so well remembered, I cannot even now refuse myself the pleasure of transcribing it, if only for the early recollections it brings along with it.

"Mine be a cot beside the hill,

A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear,
A willowy brook that turns a mill,
With many a fall shall linger near.

"Around my ivied porch shall spring,
Each fragrant flow'r that drinks the dew,
And Lucy at her wheel shall sing
In russet gown and apron blue.

"The village church among the trees,

Where first our marriage vows were given,
With merry peals shall swell the breeze,

And point with taper spire to heav'n.”

With this ruling, this absorbing feeling, no wonder that all other things became vapid. My first proof of this was in the total indifference with which I viewed our kindly neighbours at the Hall Place. They were as affable, and the girls as fine in dress as ever; but so fastidious was I grown, that their affability seemed too familiar; and as to their finery, O! heavens! what comparison could it bear with the simple elegance of Bertha !

I visited the Hall, indeed, but the inhabitants,

though so much wealthier than we, seemed now to have lost all pretensions to superiority, and were themselves thrown into obscurity. In fact, there was nothing elegant, any more than interesting in existence, but the scenery and inmates of Foljambe Park.

And yet I would not dissuade my younger readers, if the object is worthy, from early love. The boy lover may, indeed, not reach the chivalry of the mature knight, but depend upon it no youth, under the influence of an honourable attachment, will ever entertain a grovelling thought, much less stoop to a dishonourable act.

This I felt in my inmost heart. In mind, I became fastidious, delicate, jealous; in person and dress, nice, if not elegant. I was more than ever alive to the sweets of poetry, particularly pastoral, and I read with increased rapture in Virgil, the praises of Amaryllis or Galatea.

In fine, I quaffed the sweet poison of this delicious madness till, like other madmen, the delusion became part of myself, and, though fully aware of the hopelessness of my case, I would not have parted with my dream of success for all the realities of life.

In short, I felt the force of the exclamation of Leontes,

"Make me but think so twenty years together,

No settled senses of the world could match,
The pleasures of that madness,"

Thus passed my eighteenth year, full of romantic sentiment, which, inspired as it was by a soul-elevating as well as all-engrossing passion, created within me a sort of poetry of the heart, which, though it often was followed by cruel mortifications, never afterwards left me. It, in fact, under a thousand vicissitudes of good