[Footnote 88: "C'est surtout aux hommes qui sont hors de toute comparaison par le genie qu'on aime a ressembler au moins par les foiblesses."--GINGUENE.] "JOURNAL, BEGUN NOVEMBER 14. 1813. "If this had been begun ten years ago, and faithfully kept!!!--heigho! there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is. Well,--have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this life, and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have made a good use of. They say 'Virtue is its own reward,'--it certainly should be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better part of life is over, one should be _something_;--and what am I? nothing but five-and-twenty--and the odd months. What have I seen? the same man all over the world,--ay, and woman too. Give _me_ a Mussulman who never asks questions, and a she of the same race who saves one the trouble of putting them. But for this same plague--yellow fever--and Newstead delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don't so much mind your pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there,--provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval. I wish one was--I don't know what I wish. It is odd I never set myself seriously to wishing without attaining it--and repenting. I begin to believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for the nation, and not for the individual;--but, on my principle, this would not be very patriotic. "No more reflections--Let me see--last night I finished 'Zuleika,' my second Turkish Tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive--for it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of-- 'Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal'd.' At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose;--but what romance could equal the events-- 'quaeque ipse ...vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui.' "To-day Henry Byron called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,--yet I don't like to think so neither; and though older, she is not so clever.