I can hardly believe that she yielded as implicitly to these illusions as I did. I had got myself worked up into a perfect madman; and though at times I knew how false and fleeting were all these plans, yet in her presence, and after talking upon such subjects, my imagination took the reins of my reason, and I made these fanciful excursions with sincerity, and took a pleasure in the anticipation more than equal, I am convinced, to any they could have afforded in reality. I do not think she felt with me here. As I remember her, with her strong sense, her conception of the ridiculous, and exaggeration in others, her keen wit and cutting sarcasm, it seems impossible that she should. Nevertheless, every one is conscious of strange inconsistencies of feeling. A scene strikes us to-day with awe and pathetic effect, which to-morrow we pass coldly by. Every thing depends upon the state of the nervous temperament, the attending circumstances, our previous reading, the chain of events. And by the way, this is the chief use of philosophy, that it enables us to look at every thing with an investigating eye, and never to yield to impulse. The mind is taken up in sound reflection, and it has no time to lose itself in the mazes of the imagination. Age, necessity, torpor of the blood, experience, produce the same effects; while youth, and romantic ardor, and the poetical parts of life, run wild, solely from a want of habits of reflection. It seems, no doubt, a strange inconsistency, that I did not exert myself, if I so loved this noble girl. We must distinguish between passion and affection. The very nature of the first admits of no reflection. The last is all reflection, and quiet yielding of its own convenience for the happiness of the loved object. Passion is the lava of the volcano, which covers up and ruins all things under it; affection is the refreshing shower, the gentle dew, making the pastures green, and the earth glad. A good, well-regulated mind would have done otherwise than I did, but it would likewise have loved otherwise than I did. I yielded to nature and my temperament. I had not two wills, one to oppose the other; there was not in my nature any thing to oppose my nature. I have all along described myself as a foolish creature of impulse; and I was, and am, and never shall be any thing else.