How will the biographer conduct himself here? Whether will he have to say, “Potts resisted manfully this fatal attachment; had he yielded to the seductions of this early passion, it is more than probable we would never have seen him this, that, and t' other, nor would the world have been enriched with--Heaven knows what;” or shall he record, “Potts loved her, loved her as only such a nature as his ever loves! He felt keenly that, in a mere worldly point of view, he must sacrifice; but it was exactly in that love and that sacrifice was born the poet, the wondrous child of song, who has given us the most glorious lyrics of our language. He had the manliness to share his fortune with this poor girl. * It was,' he tells us of himself, in one of those little touching passages in his diary, which place him immeasurably above the mock sentimentality of Jean Jacques,--'it was on the road to Constance, of a bright and breezy summer morning, that I told her of my love. We were walking along, our arms around each other, as might two happy, guileless children. I was very young in what is called the world, but I had a boundless confidence in myself; my theory was, “If I be strengthened by the deep devotion of one loving heart, I have no fears of failure.”' Beautiful words, and worthy of all memory! And then he goes on: 'I drew her gently over to a grassy bench on the roadside, and, taking my purse from my pocket, poured out before her its humble contents, in all something less than twenty sovereigns, but to her eyes a very Pactolus of wealth.'” “What if I were to try this experiment?” thought I; “what if I were, so to say, to anticipate my own biography?” The notion pleased me much. There was something novel in it, too. It was making the experiment in the _carpore vili_ of accident, to see what might come of it. “Come here, Catinka,” said I, pointing to a moss-covered rock at the roadside, with a little well at its base,--“come here, and let me have a drink of this nice clear water.” She assented with a smile and a nod, detaching at the same time a little cup from the flask she wore at her side, in _vivandière_ fashion. “And we 'll fill my flask too,” said she, showing that it was empty. With a sort of childish glee she now knelt beside the stream, and washed the cup. What is it, I wonder, that gives the charm to running water, and imparts a sort of glad feeling to its contemplation? Is it that its ceaseless flow suggests that “forever” which contrasts so powerfully with all short-lived pleasures? I cannot tell, but I was still musing over the difficulty, when, having twice offered me the cup without my noticing it, she at last raised it to my lips. And I drank,--oh, what a draught it was! so clear, so cold, so pure; and all the time my eyes were resting on hers, looking, as it were, into another well, the deepest and most unfathomable of all.