ot be wise to interpose a limit beyond which
research need not proceed?

"I concur in all you say about G------himself. He was always looking for
better security than he needed,--a great mistake, whether the investment
consist of our affections or our money. Physicians say that if any man
could only see the delicate anatomy on which his life depends, and watch
the play of those organs that sustain him, he would not have courage to
move a step or utter a loud word. Might we not carry the analogy into
morals, and ask, is it safe or prudent in us to investigate too deeply?
are we wise in dissecting motives? or would it not be better to enjoy
our moral as we do our material health, without seeking to assure
ourselves further?

"Besides all this, the untravelled Englishman--and such was Glencore
when he married--never can be brought to understand the harmless
levities of foreign life. Like a fresh-water sailor, he always fancies
the boat is going to upset, and he throws himself out at the first
'jobble'! I own to you frankly, I never knew the case in question; 'how
far she went,' is a secret to me. I might have heard the whole story.
It required some address in me to escape it; but I do detest these
narrations, where truth is marred by passion, and all just inferences
confused and confounded with vague and absurd suspicions.

"Glencore's conduct throughout was little short of insanity; like a
man who, hearing his banker is insecure, takes refuge in insolvency, he
ruins himself to escape embarrassment. They tell me here that the shock
has completely deranged his intellect, and that he lives a life of
melancholy isolation in that old castle in Ireland.

"How few men in this world can count the cost of their actions, and make
up that simple calculation, 'How much shall I have to pay for it?'

"Take any view one pleases of the case, would it not have been
better for him to have remained in the world and of it? Would not its
pleasures, even its cares, have proved better 'distractions' than his
own brooding thoughts? If a man have a secret ailment, does he parade
it in public? Why, then, this exposure of a pain for which there is no
sympathy?

"Life, after all, is only a system of compensations. Wish it to be
whatever you please, but accept it as it really is, and make the best
of it! For my own part, I have ever felt like one who, having got a most
disastrous account of a road he was about to travel, is delightfully
surpri