he has found, and indulge in the sleep that has overtaken him amid
the stormy blasts of the waste mountains, may be little else than
opening for himself the gates of death, yet the toils of the way through
which he has already passed may also have rendered him incapable of
resisting the dangerous rest and repose of his immediate accommodation.
In regard to my own love affairs, I, throughout all these long years
which I have specified, might well have adopted, as the motto of both
mind and heart, these lines--

"'Oh, poortith cauld and restless love,
Ye wreck my peace between ye.'

I had, as has already been hinted, a rival, who, if not so devotedly
attached as I, nevertheless was by far too much so for any one who is
destined to love without encouragement. He was as rich in proportion as
I was poor. The gifts of love, called the gifts of friendship, which he
contrived to bestow were costly; mine, as fashioned forth by a higher
hand than that of art, might be equally rich and beautiful in the main,
yet wild-flowers, though yellow as the gold, and though wrapped in
rhymes, are light ware when weighed against the solid material. He, in
personal appearance, manners, and generosity of heart, was one with whom
it was impossible to be acquainted and not to esteem; and another
feature of this affair was, that we were friends, and almost constant
companions for some years. When in the country I had to be with him as
continually as possible; and when I went to the city, it was his wont to
follow me. Here, then, was a web strangely woven by the fingers of a
wayward fate. Feelings were brought into daily exercise which might seem
the least compatible with being brought into contact and maintained in
harmony. And these things, which are strictly true, if set forth in the
contrivances of romance might, or in all likelihood would, be pronounced
unnatural or overstrained. The worth and truth of the heart to which
these fond anxieties related left me no ground to fear for losing that
regard which I valued as 'light and life' itself; but in another way
there reached me a matchless misery, and which haunted me almost as
constantly as my own shadow when the sun shone. Considering the dark
uncertainty of my future prospects in life, that regard I felt it
fearful almost beyond measure even to seek to retain, incurring the
responsibility of marring the fortune of one whom nevertheless I could
not bear the thought of another than my