Whether this 'perfect felicity' was attained and how long it lasted we do not know. Maria no doubt had her day like the others; the sequel to the vow in St. Paul's we may conjecture. Boswell, if his name endured for no other talents, would remain with us for ever as an incomparable genius for reviving affection. In December we learn: 'Miss Blair is Miss Blair still,'--still a fit subject for this curious pastime. 'I was two or three times at Adamtown, and, upon my word, the old flame was kindled.' Miss Blair apparently had been piqued because her suitor had made such a joke of his love for the heiress in every company. 'Temple, to a man again in love, this was engaging. I walked whole hours with the princess; I kneeled; I became truly amorous.' These brief sentences adequately describe the last recorded love-scene. If Boswell corresponded with Temple between December 1768 and May 1770 the letters have been lost; and so the outrageous story ends abruptly--and it is fortunate perhaps for the readers of this book, for it is a story so fascinating and so absurd and so richly human that no part of it can be omitted. Boswell in fact was destined to be married to his cousin, Miss Montgomerie. The Montgomeries were an aristocratic family related to Lord Eglinton, and Boswell was proud of the connection: he speaks in a published pamphlet of 'having the honour and happiness to be married to his Lordship's relation, a true Montgomerie.' We know very little about Mrs. Boswell. Johnson's curt judgment in a letter to Mrs. Thrale is probably right in placing her with the great bulk of mediocre humanity: 'Mrs. B---- has the mien and manners of a gentlewoman; and such a person and mind as would not be in any place either admired or contemned. She is in a proper degree inferior to her husband: she cannot rival him, nor can he ever be ashamed of her.' But if undistinguished, as in Johnson's view a good wife should be, the lady had some excellent qualities; and Johnson himself would have been the first to praise them. If he urged Boswell on more than one occasion to be considerate of his home, it was because he knew that the home was both pleasant and valuable to his friend: 'I need not tell you what regard you owe to Mrs. Boswell's entreaties; or how much you ought to study the happiness of her who studies yours with so much diligence, and of whose kindness you enjoy such good effects.' Boswell, too, loudly sings the praise of his wife: 'I am fully sensible,' he writes to Temple, 'of my happiness in being married to so excellent a woman, so sensible a mistress of a family, so agreeable a companion, so affectionate and peculiarly proper helpmate for me.' After her death he writes: 'I had no occasion almost to think concerning my family, and every particular was thought of by her better than I could'; and he refers to her in the 'Life of Johnson' as 'my very valuable wife, and the very affectionate mother of my children, who, if they inherit