man, with his sorrows and his dreams, had never trodden, I wrestled with
my soul, as the patriarch of old wrestled with the angel,--and the angel
was at last the victor! You do not mistake me: you know that it was not
the death of Florence alone that worked in me that awful revolution; but
with that death the last glory fled from the face of things that had
seemed to me beautiful of old. Hers was a love that accompanied and
dignified the schemes and aspirations of manhood,--a love that was an
incarnation of ambition itself; and all the evils and disappointments
that belong to ambition seemed to crowd around my heart like vultures to
a feast allured and invited by the dead. But this at length was over;
the barbarous state restored me to the civilized. I returned to my
equals, prepared no more to be an actor in the strife, but a calm
spectator of the turbulent arena. I once more laid my head beneath the
roof of my fathers; and if without any clear and definite object, I at
least hoped to find amidst "my old hereditary trees" the charm of
contemplation and repose. And scarce--in the first hours of my
arrival--had I indulged that dream, when a fair face, a sweet voice, that
had once before left deep and unobliterated impressions on my heart,
scattered all my philosophy to the winds. I saw Evelyn! and if ever
there was love at first sight, it was that which I felt for her: I lived
in her presence, and forgot the Future! Or, rather, I was with the
Past,--in the bowers of my springtide of life and hope! It was an
after-birth of youth--my love for that young heart!

It is, indeed, only in maturity that we know how lovely were our earliest
years! What depth of wisdom in the old Greek myth, that allotted Hebe as
the prize to the god who had been the arch-labourer of life! and whom the
satiety of all that results from experience had made enamoured of all
that belongs to the Hopeful and the New!