“Bah! it would be too absurd, too utterly preposterous. Such things have been, and have always resulted in pretty much the same way. Your poet Shelley gets expelled from the University because he can’t keep his convictions to himself, marries a simple rustic maiden, grows tired of her, and falls in love with someone else, whereon rustic maiden drowns herself, whence unspeakable _esclandre_ and confusion. “_January 2nd._--No, the thing cannot be done; the sacrifice would be too great. The days of the Minerva Press are past. The yellow post-chaise, the lonely country inn, the college friend who is introduced in a surplice, and acts as clergyman--alas! are not these exploded with the dark ages? Were there ever any such marriages, I wonder? or were they only figments of the romancer’s brain? At any rate, anything of that kind must be impossible nowadays. And then a man must be a consummate scoundrel who could devise such a plot. I don’t pretend to the Sunday-school species of morality; but _nemo repente fuit turpissimus_, as Juvenal has it. I am not so bad as that. “_5th._--She is very unhappy; and how hard it seems to leave her to this drudgery and desolation--Coltonslough, and my landlady, and my landlady’s children, all the year round! And she is just the ‘creature not too bright or good,’ &c.; the very woman of all others for a cottage in the lake districts, or a Devonshire fishing-village, or any pretty out-of-the-way haven, where a man might take his rest. And yet I must leave her here, baffled entirely by the Sunday-school precepts with which her shallow mind has been imbued. I have no time to play the Lovelace, and I don’t want such a victory as his. I have had tiresome letters from home. They will expect me to get my degree; and I am free to confess that my reading since I have been at Coltonslough has been the merest moonshine. Decidedly I must leave this place by to-night’s express. ‘Better to die by sudden shock,’ &c.: and as for Susan, it is only a natural chapter in such a girl’s history. She will break her heart, and then marry a small tradesman, who will give her a Paisley shawl and a black-silk gown to wear on Sundays.