Love, that passion productive of so many pains and pleasures to mortals, the most easily, perhaps, awakened, and the most difficult to control, begins full early with some of us (idiosyncratically susceptible) to manifest its disturbing effects: the little volcano of the heart (to speak figuratively) throws out its transient and flickering flames long anterior to a grand eruption. Lord Byron’s history exhibits a great and touching example of this; his early but unrequited attachment to the beautiful Miss Chaworth served undoubtedly, in after-life, to tinge his character with that sombre cast which has imparted itself to the splendid creations of his immortal genius. Like him (if I may dare include myself in the same category), when but nine or ten summers had passed over my head, I too had my “lady love,” who, albeit no Mary Chaworth, was nevertheless a very pretty little blue-eyed girl, the daughter of our village doctor. I think I now behold her, in the eye of my remembrance, with her white muslin frock, long pink sash, and necklace of coral beads, her flaxen curls flying wildly in the breeze, or sporting in all conceivable lines of beauty over her alabaster neck and forehead. Full joyous was I when an invitation came for Master Frank Gernon and his brother Tom to drink tea at Dr. Anodyne’s. How motherly and kind was good Mrs. Anodyne on these occasions! how truly liberal of her pound-cake and syllabub! Dear woman! spite of thy many failings, which all “lean to virtue’s side,” in the sweet relations of mother, wife, sister, friend, thou art a being to be almost worshipped. ’Tis you who hold man’s destinies in your hands. Harden your minds without the limits of blue-stockingism, as a counterpoise to the softness of your hearts; acquire independence of thought and moral courage, and you will yet convert the world into a paradise! The little bard of Twickenham has, on the whole, maligned you: mistaken the factitious for the original; the faults of education for the defects of nature; the belle of 1700 for the woman of all time—but was still right when he said, Courage with softness, modesty with pride, Fix’d principles—with fancy ever new; Shake all together, it produces—you.