Or if he had coveted senatorial fame, what a space would he have filled in the political hemisphere! If he had introduced a Turnpike Bill, the House would have forgotten Emancipation for a time; if he had moved the committal of a printer, Europe would have gazed as upon the arrest of a peer of the realm. The Minister he supported would have been the most virtuous of statesmen when both Houses had voted his impeachment; the gentlemen he represented would have been the most virtuous of constituents when they had sold him their voices at five per cent. over the market price. Destiny ordered it otherwise. One day, in that sultry season of the year when fevers and flirtations come to their crisis, and matrimony and hydrophobia scare you at every corner, I happened to call at his rooms in Regent Street, at about that time in the afternoon which the fashionable world calls daybreak. He was sitting with his chocolate before him, habited only in his _robe de chambre_; but the folds of that joyous drapery seemed to me composed in a more studied negligence than was their wont, and the dark curls upon his fine forehead were arranged in a more scrupulous disorder. I saw at a glance that some revolution was breaking out in the state of my poor friend’s mind; and when I found a broken fan on the mantelpiece and a withered rosebud on the sofa, Walker’s Lexicon open on the writing-table and an unfinished stanza reposing on the toast-rack, I was no longer in doubt as to its nature; the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was seriously in love. It was not to be wondered at that his mistress was the loveliest being of her sex, nor that he told me so fourteen times in the following week. Her father was a German prince, the proprietor of seven leagues of vineyard, five ruined castles, and three hundred flocks of sheep. She had light hair, blue eyes, and a profound knowledge of metaphysics; she sang like a siren, and her name was Adelinda. I spent a few months abroad. When I returned, he was married to the loveliest being of her sex, and had sent me fifty notes to inform me of the fact and beseech me to visit him at Volant Hall, with the requisite quantity of sympathy and congratulation. I went, and was introduced in form. Her father was a country clergyman, the proprietor of seven acres of glebe, five broken armchairs, and three hundred manuscript discourses; she had dark hair, black eyes, and a fond love of poetry; she danced like a wood-nymph, and her name was Mary.