self: his very love for Ethel made him sensible how dreadful was the existence to which love came not.
"But," continued he, "she is young, gentle,—nay, sometimes almost pretty; she may yet find an unoccupied heart."
To this he might have added, that she was one of the first heiresses in England; but Norbourne was too young, and too enthusiastic, to balance interest and affection for one moment in the scales together. I believe all the good that is sometimes said of human nature when I remember the feelings of youth; and it is this principle explains why men, whose "hearts are dry as summer's dust," often delight in the society of the very young. The sympathy is awakened by memory.
Wallenstein exclaims of Max Piccolomini:
"For, oh! he stood beside me like my youth."
The stern and worldly general saw in the young and ardent all that he had himself once been—generous, confiding, impatient of evil, confident of good, devoted and affec-
