hile her lesser
sister, Helen, played with the doll, and we sat gravely making love
in our own way.

"How the deuce did all this occur so early? Where could it
originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterward, and
yet my misery, my love for that girl, were so violent, that I
sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that
as it may, hearing of her marriage, several years afterward, was as a
thunderstroke. It nearly choked me, to the horror of my mother, and
the astonishment and almost incredulity of everybody; and it is a
phenomenon in my existence, for I was not eight years old, which has
puzzled and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it. And, lately, I
know not why, the RECOLLECTION (NOT the attachment) has recurred as
forcibly as ever: I wonder if she can have the least remembrance of
it or me, or remember pitying her sister Helen, for not having an
admirer too. How very pretty is the perfect image of her in my
memory. Her dark brown hair and hazel eyes, her very dress--I should
be quite grieved to see her now. The reality, however beautiful,
would destroy, or at least confuse, the features of the lovely Peri,
which then existed in her, and still lives in my imagination, at the
distance of more than sixteen years."

Such precocious and sympathetic affections are, as I have already
mentioned, common among children, and is something very different
from the love of riper years; but the extract is curious, and shows
how truly little and vague Byron's experience of the passion must
have been. In his recollection of the girl, be it observed, there is
no circumstance noticed which shows, however strong the mutual
sympathy, the slightest influence of particular attraction. He
recollects the colour of her hair, the hue of her eyes, her very
dress, and he remembers her as a Peri, a spirit; nor does it appear
that his sleepless restlessness, in which the thought of her was ever
uppermost, was produced by jealousy, or doubt, or fear, or any other
concomitant of the passion.

There is another most important circumstance in what may be called
the Aberdonian epoch of Lord Byron's life.

That Byron, in his boyhood, was possessed of lively sensibilities, is
sufficiently clear; that he enjoyed the advantage of indulging his
humour and temper without restraint, is not disputable; and that his
natural temperament made him sensible, in no ordinary degree, to the
beauties of nature, is a