_Por ubbidir chi sempre ubbidir debbe La mente,_[5] acted promptly. Accustomed as he was to weigh things of moment in the balance, and hold it with as even and as nice a hand, as if he were compounding a prescription on which the life of a patient might depend, he was no shillishallier, nor ever wasted a precious minute in pro-and-conning, when it was necessary at once to decide and act. _Chi ha tempo, e tempo aspetta, il tempo perde._[6] His first love, as the reader will remember, came by inoculation, and was taken at first sight. This third and last, he used to say, came by inoculation also; but it was a more remarkable case, for eleven years elapsed before there was an appearance of his having taken the infection. How it happened that an acquaintance of so many years, and which at its very commencement had led to confidence and esteem and familiarity and friendship, should have led no farther, may easily be explained. Dove, when he first saw Deborah, was in love with another person. [Footnote 3: DRYDEN.] [Footnote 4: THOMAS LODGE.] [Footnote 5: PULCI.] [Footnote 6: SERAFINO DA L'AQUILA.] He had attended poor Lucy Bevan from the eighteenth year of her age, when a tendency to consumption first manifested itself in her, till the twenty-fifth, when she sunk under that slow and insidious malady. She, who for five of those seven years, fancied herself during every interval, or mitigation of the disease, restored to health, or in the way of recovery, had fixed her affections upon him. And he who had gained those affections by his kind and careful attendance upon a case of which he soon saw cause to apprehend the fatal termination, becoming aware of her attachment as he became more and more mournfully convinced that no human skill could save her, found himself unawares engaged in a second passion, as hopeless as his first. That had been wilful; this was equally against his will and his judgment: that had been a folly, this was an affliction. And the only consolation which he found in it was, that the consciousness of loving and of being beloved, which made him miserable, was a happiness to her as long as she retained a hope of life, or was capable of feeling satisfaction in anything relating to this world. Caroline Bowles, whom no authoress or author has ever surpassed in truth and tenderness and sanctity of feeling, could relate such a story as it ought to be related,—if stories which in themselves are purely painful ought ever to be told. I will not attempt to tell it:—for I wish not to draw upon the reader's tears, and have none to spare for it myself.