es, frequent occasion to consult me. There were, she saw,
several ladies of her acquaintance, who used occasionally to converse
with me in the churchyard; but in order to make assurance doubly sure
respecting the perfect propriety of such a proceeding on her part, she
took the laudable precaution of stating the case to her mother's
landlord, a thoroughly sensible man, one of the magistrates of the
burgh, and an elder of the kirk; and he at once certified that there was
no lady of the place who might not converse, without remark, as often
and as long as she pleased with me. And so, fully justified, both by the
example of her friends--all very judicious women, some of them only a
few years older than herself--and by the deliberate judgment of a very
sensible man, the magistrate and elder--my young lady friend learned to
visit me in the churchyard, just like the other ladies; and, latterly
at least, considerably oftener than any of them. We used to converse on
all manner of subjects connected with the _belles-lettres_ and the
philosophy of mind, with, so far as I can at present remember, only one
marked exception. On that mysterious affection which sometimes springs
up between persons of the opposite sexes when thrown much
together--though occasionally discussed by the metaphysicians, and much
sung by the poets--we by no chance ever touched. Love formed the one
solitary subject which, from some curious contingency, invariably
escaped us.

And yet, latterly at least, I had begun to think about it a good deal.
Nature had not fashioned me one of the sort of people who fall in love
at first sight. I had even made up my mind to live a bachelor life,
without being very much impressed by the magnitude of the sacrifice; but
I daresay it did mean something, that in my solitary walks for the
preceding fourteen or fifteen years, a female companion often walked in
fancy by my side, with whom I exchanged many a thought, and gave
expression to many a feeling, and to whom I pointed out many a beauty in
the landscape, and communicated many a curious fact, and whose
understanding was as vigorous as her taste was faultless and her
feelings exquisite. One of the English essayists--the elder Moore--has
drawn a very perfect personage of this airy character (not, however, of
the softer, but of the masculine sex), under the name of the "maid's
husband;" and described him as one of the most formidable rivals that
the ordinary lover of flesh and b