not find in his heart to part. Hence, after a night of pale and
speechless melancholy, the gay, animated, happy countenance with
which he sprang to our coach-box to take his old seat on it, and
accompany us to Rotterdam. There even could he not part, but joined
us in the steamboat; and, after bearing us company as far as a boat
could follow us, at last tore himself away, to bury himself in
Paris, and try to work . . . .

"It was fortunate, perhaps, that this affection was returned by the
warmest friendship only, since it was destined that the
accomplishment of his wishes was impossible, for many obstacles
which lay in his way; and it is with pleasure I can truly say that
in time he schooled himself to view, also with friendship only, one
who for some time past has been the wife of another."

Upon the delicacy of this revelation the biographer does not comment, but
he says that the idea that Irving thought of marriage at that time is
utterly disproved by the following passage from the very manuscript which
he submitted to Mrs. Foster:

"You wonder why I am not married. I have shown you why I was not
long since. When I had sufficiently recovered from that loss,
I became involved in ruin. It was not for a man broken down in the
world, to drag down any woman to his paltry circumstances. I was
too proud to tolerate the idea of ever mending my circumstances by
matrimony. My time has now gone by; and I have growing claims upon
my thoughts and upon my means, slender and precarious as they are.
I feel as if I already had a family to think and provide for."

Upon the question of attachment and depression, Mr. Pierre Irving says: