[Footnote 88: "C'est surtout aux hommes qui sont hors de toute
comparaison par le génie qu'on aime à ressembler au moins par les
foiblesses."--GINGUENE.]


"JOURNAL, BEGUN NOVEMBER 14. 1813.

"If this had been begun ten years ago, and faithfully kept!!!--heigho!
there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is.
Well,--have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this life,
and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have made a
good use of. They say 'Virtue is its own reward,'--it certainly should
be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better part
of life is over, one should be _something_;--and what am I? nothing but
five-and-twenty--and the odd months. What have I seen? the same man all
over the world,--ay, and woman too. Give _me_ a Mussulman who never asks
questions, and a she of the same race who saves one the trouble of
putting them. But for this same plague--yellow fever--and Newstead
delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the
Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don't so much mind your
pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there,--provided I
neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval. I wish
one was--I don't know what I wish. It is odd I never set myself
seriously to wishing without attaining it--and repenting. I begin to
believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for the
nation, and not for the individual;--but, on my principle, this would
not be very patriotic.

"No more reflections--Let me see--last night I finished 'Zuleika,' my
second Turkish Tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive--for