presented to me. A good deal of Latin, a very little Greek, an immensity of French, and a certain portion of Italian and Spanish, were thus run through, with, perhaps, little benefit; but the whole system of my studies, if that can be called system which had no regularity, was altered from what it had been when I was at school. It was my tutor's maxim that a man was born to know every thing, and consequently, no expurgated editions were put into my hand. The warmest of the Latin poets, and the least chaste of the French and Italian, were given to me without ceremony; and where I wanted notes or interpretations, my worthy tutor supplied them fully, sometimes in a grave and scientific manner, sometimes laughing till he was ready to fall from his chair. Immense quantities of English also did I read, ancient and modern, good and bad--Milton's purity and Rochester's filth; Southey's inimitable poetry, and the novels of Maria Regina Roche. Four books especially took possession of my imagination, and remain to the present time amongst those in which I can read every day. They were the Arabian Nights, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Southey's Curse of Kehema. My love for Shakspeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, came at an after period; and towards the age of seventeen, I began to read the romances of Sir Walter Scott--works which were calculated to do my mind the most infinite service, to blend the love of virtue with the spirit of adventure, and tame wild imagination to the uses of the world.

Fencing, riding, cudgel-playing, varied the time with mathematics, geometry, and astronomy. History came in for a great portion of my attention, and books of travels maintained their share. Thus did I become one of the most desultory beings that the world ever produced; so that, before I was eighteen years of age, my mind was literally like a pawnbroker's shop, full of an odd assemblage of unconnected things, huddled together in the storehouses of memory, unmarked and disarranged, and difficult to be got at. Many of these stores also were calculated to be injurious to me in various ways; they did prove so, certainly, in some degree; but that they did not become more so, I owe, I believe, to two causes--first, my early fondness for the writings of Southey, where virtue, robed in poetry and eloquence, is splendid enough to catch even imagination; and next, my having fallen in love before I was much exposed to the temptations of the world.

The reader--if any one do read these pages--will easily divine the object of that early, but not less permanent, affection. Emily Somers had become, from the circumstances which I have related, my little pet and protégée. I loved her because I protected and defended her even against one whom I loved also. But soon I began to take an interest in the development of her mind, and I used to write out the purest and most beautiful passages of all I read, to read to her again; and learned to love her from the sympathy and the reciprocation of mutual ideas which this produced: but, by the time I was eighteen and she was sixteen, other feelings began to make themselves felt in my bosom. Then came the period when, from a very pretty child, she burst forth into one of the loveliest girls that it was possible to behold, and I soon learned to love with all the ardent and thrilling passion of manhood. Such is the history of my affection for her, and it is hardly necessary to say that it was returned. She had known me from infancy; she had never met with any thing but kindness at my hands; she had made me on all occasions her protector and her confidant; and she had found something even in the faults and foibles of which my character was composed to excite her interest. Neither did she see much of any one who was likely to compete with me in any respect. Our society, though large, was rather general than intimate; my mother was very averse to the idea of introducing Emily, what she called, too soon; and thus, before she mingled with the world, her heart was given never to be recalled.

Roving over the earth as I did, from time to time, I had made some friends and a good many acquaintances; but I did not give them great facilities of rivalling me in Emily's affection. At Mr. Somers's house I had my own apartments, where I received my own visitors--not indeed with any confessed purpose of keeping them away from Emily, but perhaps with some latent feeling of jealousy, which endured till I felt certain that I possessed her love in return. In such matters I was much more learned than she was, and soon found out the state of my own heart, but I did not so easily convince myself of the state of her's; for sisterly affection was too cold a return to satisfy so ardent a nature as mine, and I feared that the feelings which she entertained towards me might be of no warmer a kind. Perhaps, indeed, if I had always remained near her, her feelings might have remained such as I feared they might be; but I was absent from time to time, and returned from a long visit to Paris, just at that period of Emily's life when a woman's heart is most open to the more powerful affections. That she would marry me if I asked her, I felt sure, but I wished her to love me with all that thrilling ardour which I felt towards her, and I only learned to believe that she did so by one of those sudden glimpses which accident sometimes gives us into the best-concealed feelings. I was accustomed to treat her in every respect as a sister, to employ every endearing term towards her, and to use all those kind familiarities which one does to a dear and near relative. Thus one day, when I was in my twentieth year, and she was approaching eighteen, I returned from some visits I had been paying, and, finding her alone in the drawing-room at work, I sat down beside her, and threw my arm lightly round her.

"I have been spending part of the morning, Emily," I said, "with your friend Helen ----" (naming a very lovely girl, who was a frequent visitor at our house); and, as I spoke, I could see the colour come and go in Emily's cheek in a manner that excited my curiosity.

After a moment, however, she raised her eyes, and said, "She is a very charming girl indeed, James, and I dare say will make an amiable wife."

"I dare say she will, Emily," I answered with a smile; "pray do you know who is to be the happy man?"

"Oh, James, James," she said, shaking her head in a manner that she meant to be wholly playful, but which certainly had a touch of sadness in it, "do not try to be mysterious with me, my dear brother. I heard papa and mamma talking about it this morning, and saying what a good thing it would be for you and her."

"And did you believe it, Emily?" I exclaimed. "Could you be so mistaken? But I am glad you have told me, dear girl, for certainly I will never set my foot in that house again alone, till Helen ---- is married."

"Dear me! I have forgot something up stairs," cried Emily, starting up and going towards the door with her face turned entirely from me. But she passed two looking-glasses ere she reached the end of the room, and the first showed me something very bright swimming in her eyes and reflecting the light from the windows; the second displayed those bright drops running rapidly over her eyelashes, and rolling down her cheeks. I was by her side in a moment, and, closing the door she had partly opened, I drew her gently back to the sofa, where, holding her fondly to my heart, I kissed away the tears from that beloved cheek. "Dear Emily," I said, "never believe that I am going to marry any one in the whole world, if Emily Somers will not accept me herself."

It were tedious, perhaps, to detail all that followed. I soon gained a confession that I was loved as I could desire, but I could not make Emily promise to be mine positively, till I had spoken both to her father and my mother, and as we knew that neither would consent to our union before I had reached