detect the truth that a man in love with a woman does not weigh her
merits with so steady a hand as that which guides this steel pen. I
am not in love with Cecilia Travers. I wish I were. When Lady
Glenalvon, who remains wonderfully kind to me, says, day after day,
"Cecilia Travers would make you a perfect wife," I have no answer to
give; but I don't feel the least inclined to ask Cecilia Travers if
she would waste her perfection on one who so coldly concedes it.

I find that she persisted in rejecting the man whom her father wished
her to marry, and that he has consoled himself by marrying somebody
else. No doubt other suitors as worthy will soon present themselves.

Oh, dearest of all my friends,--sole friend whom I regard as a
confidant,--shall I ever be in love? and if not, why not? Sometimes I
feel as if, with love as with ambition, it is because I have some
impossible ideal in each, that I must always remain indifferent to the
sort of love and the sort of ambition which are within my reach. I
have an idea that if I did love, I should love as intensely as Romeo,
and that thought inspires me with vague forebodings of terror; and if
I did find an object to arouse my ambition, I could be as earnest in
its pursuit as--whom shall I name?--Caesar or Cato? I like Cato's
ambition the better of the two. But people nowadays call ambition an
impracticable crotchet, if it be invested on the losing side. Cato
would have saved Rome from the mob and the dictator; but Rome could
not be saved, and Cato falls on his own sword. Had we a Cato now, the
verdict at a coroner's inquest would be, "suicide while in a state of
unsound mind;" and the verdict would have been proved by his senseless
resistance to a mob and a dictator! Talking of ambition, I come to
the other exception to the youth of the day; I have named a
/demoiselle/, I now name a /damoiseau/. Imagine a man of about