for which there is the least accounting, I have always thought, that to give reasons for its happening, is throwing the said reasons away—a waste much to be deprecated in an age where reasons are in such great request. It is not beauty that inspires love—still less is it mind. It is not situation—people who were indifferent in a moonlight walk have taken a fit of sentiment in Piccadilly. It is not early association: indeed, the chances are rather against the Paul and Virginia style. It is not dress—conquests have been made in curl-papers. In short—to be mythological in my conclusion—the quiver of Cupid hangs at the girdle of Fate, together with her spindle and scissors.
AFRICAN DISCOVERY.
There is something very melancholy in the many valuable lives which have been sacrificed during the course of African discovery. But I believe that travelling is as much a passion as love, poetry, or ambition. What of less force than a passion could, in the first instance, induce men to fix their thoughts on undertakings whose difficulties and dangers were at once so obvious and so many? What but a passion (and the energy of passion is wonderful) could support them through toil, hardship, and suffering—all in the very face of death—and for what? But true it is, that of any great exertion in which the mind has part, the best reward is in the exertion itself.
HOME.
I do not go quite the length of the modern philosopher, who asserts that our nature is not wholly sophisticated so long as we retain our juvenile predilection in favour of apple-dumpling; but I do think that the affection which clings to the home of our childhood—the early love which lingers round the flowers we have sown, the shrubs we have planted—is, though a simple, a sweet and purifying influence on the character. I cannot help thinking, that the drooping bough, the fairy-like rose, lend something of their own grace to one who has loved them and made them her companions.
