favours truly great there is scarce anything but ingratitude." They must
have been small favours that Wordsworth had conferred when "the gratitude
of men had oftener left him mourning." Indeed, the very pettiness of the
aid we can generally render each other, makes gratitude the touching
thing it is. So much is repaid for so little, and few can ever have the
chance of incurring the thanklessness that Rochefoucauld found all but
universal.

"Lovers and ladies never bore each other, because they never speak of
anything but themselves." Do husbands and wives often bore each other
for the same reason? Who said: "To know all is to forgive all"? It is
rather like "On pardonne tant que l'on aime"--"As long as we love we can
forgive," a comfortable saying, and these are rare in Rochefoucauld.
"Women do not quite know what flirts they are" is also, let us hope, not
incorrect. The maxim that "There is a love so excessive that it kills
jealousy" is only a corollary from "as long as we love, we forgive." You
remember the classical example, Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier des
Grieux; not an honourable precedent.

"The accent of our own country dwells in our hearts as well as on our
tongues." Ah! never may I lose the Border accent! "Love's Miracle! To
cure a coquette." "Most honest women are tired of their task," says this
unbeliever. And the others? Are they never aweary? The Duke is his own
best critic after all, when he says: "The greatest fault of a penetrating
wit is going beyond the mark." Beyond the mark he frequently goes, but
not when he says that we come as fresh hands to each new epoch of life,
and often want experience for all our years. How hard it was to begin to
be middle-aged! Shall we find old age easier if ever we come to its
threshold? Perhaps, and Death perhaps the easiest of all. Nor let me
forget, it will be long before _you_ have occasion to remember, that