KENELM (passing the bottle).--“Yes, yes; you are quite right in putting the adversary’s case strongly, before you demolish it: all good rhetoricians do that. Pardon me if I am up to that trick in argument. Assume that I know all that can be said in favour of the abnegation of common-sense, euphoniously called ‘love,’ and proceed to the demolition of the case.” THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH (hesitatingly).--“The demolition of the case? humph! The passions are ingrafted in the human system as part and parcel of it, and are not to be demolished so easily as you seem to think. Love, taken rationally and morally by a man of good education and sound principles, is--is--” KENELM.--“Well, is what?” THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH.--“A--a--a--thing not to be despised. Like the sun, it is the great colourist of life, Mr. Chillingly. And you are so right: the moral system does require daily exercise. What can give that exercise to a solitary man, when he arrives at the practical age in which he cannot sit for six hours at a stretch musing on the divine essence; and rheumatism or other ailments forbid his adventure into the wilds of Africa as a missionary? At that age, Nature, which will be heard, Mr. Chillingly, demands her rights. A sympathizing female companion by one’s side; innocent little children climbing one’s knee,--lovely, bewitching picture! Who can be Goth enough to rub it out, who fanatic enough to paint over it the image of a Saint Simeon sitting alone on a pillar? Take another glass. You don’t drink enough, Mr. Chillingly.” “I have drunk enough,” replied Kenelm, in a sullen voice, “to think I see double. I imagined that before me sat the austere adversary of the insanity of love and the miseries of wedlock. Now, I fancy I listen to a puling sentimentalist uttering the platitudes which the other Decimus Roach had already refuted. Certainly either I see double, or you amuse yourself with mocking my appeal to your wisdom.” “Not so, Mr. Chillingly. But the fact is, that when I wrote that book of which you speak I was young, and youth is enthusiastic and one-sided. Now, with the same disdain of the excesses to which love may hurry weak intellects, I recognize its benignant effects when taken, as I before said, rationally,--taken rationally, my young friend. At that period of life when the judgment is matured, the soothing companionship of an amiable female cannot but cheer the mind, and prevent that morose hoar-frost into which solitude is chilled and made rigid by increasing years. In short, Mr. Chillingly, having convinced myself that I erred in the opinion once too rashly put forth, I owe it to Truth, I owe it to Mankind, to make my conversion known to the world. And I am about next month to enter into the matrimonial state with a young lady who--” “Say no more, say no more, Mr. Roach. It must be a painful subject to you. Let us drop it.”