sense of real duty than by the belief that such a course is the surest way to regain my happiness. Think you, that any sense of duty would have hindered me from recalling the happy delirium that once infatuated me, did I not purchase the enjoyment with such bitter pangs that I dare no longer recur to the past? No; by degrees I am acquiring more control over my own mind; and by suffocating, at the moment of their birth, all ideas in the least connected with that fatal era, I hope at length to beat off the intrusion of events which it must be impossible for me ever to remember without a pang.

"Unfortunately the bent of my disposition has always been to revel with a sort of morbid delight in the luxury of grief.' I have lately learnt the meaning of this insane affection: I see clearly that it arises in a pleasure we take in imagining ourselves to be objects of the most profound pity. To indulge in the remembrance of affliction

from such a motive, to exasperate calamity by representing oneself to oneself as an object deserving the sympathy and consolation of others, when we have it in our own power to make ourselves independent by the use of our own energies, would, if the case were mine, deprive me of all self-respect. I feel, now even, that it would have been far nobler in me to have entombed my sorrow for ever in my own breast, instead of seeking commiseration by imparting it to another, even though that other be such a friend as yourself. To have relied solely for comfort on the consciousness of having acted rightly while I suffered deeply, would have been more gratifying to look back upon than a pity I should despise, or the praise I do not deserve.

"Your maxims are excellent; I will not forget them. You needed hardly to have reminded me of the secret of my great misfortune. I was never so blinded by my infatuation as not to see it was infatuation

which possessed me. As to true love, I want no Ghost from Denmark to convince me it is the greatest of all delusions, or that the object we love is at any time anything but the bare stock on which we engraft the image of our phantasy. Do not think this a contradiction of what I have before said of Lady Eda. I do not recant one syllable. As I become released from the thraldom of a passion which compelled me blindly to worship qualities she perhaps did not possess, the light of returning reason leads me to admire those rare qualities, which then, I did not even look for, but which in truth distinguish her. Were our admiration and desire of possession confined to reality, reality would not deceive us. It is ignorance exalted on the wings of imagination, that lifts us from the calmness of the temperate, to plunge us into the whirlwinds of the torrid zone. Once more, a thousand thanks for

VOL. II.

M

your excellent advice, and believe me

ever

Yours, most gratefully,

"PIERCE MORE.

"P.S.-Please do not send me any more 'kind remembrances,' they are more cruel

of forgets

than kind. A waggon-load of

would be of some service."

"Mona Castle, August, 184-.

My dear Pierce,

"You have turned philosopher and stoic, I find. Like the Lacedemonian youth with his fox, you would rather have your bowels torn out than utter a cry. The gist of your letter is that you have preferred policy to virtue. I maintain that virtue is the best policy; and that in pursuing the course most conducive to your happiness, you have chosen the wisest and most virtuous one. The modest opinion you entertain of the merits of

your conduct does not render you the less praiseworthy; on the contrary, such diffidence, or rather such a sense of our unworthiness, is the best proof that we are on the road to improvement. Remember what I once told you of trials, how essential they are to the calling forth of strength. Rest assured that all burdens imposed by a just Providence are proportioned to our strength; and be happy, and modestly rejoice that the unusual greatness of your trials affords you occasion to exert the unusual power you have within you to combat them.

"To any young person but yourself in a similar position, I should recommend travelling and a change of scene; but you have travelled enough, and in one respect you have lived longer than many men of twice your age. To you, therefore, I would repeat the advice contained in the close of my last letter-on no account would I have your mind disturbed in any way, but by wholesome ac