e you go? I should be most
proud. I was in hopes to have got away by the Steam-boat to-morrow, but
owing to the business not coming on till then, I cannot; and may not be
in town for another week, unless I come by the Mail, which I am strongly
tempted to do. In the latter case I shall be there, and visible on
Saturday evening. Will you look in and see, about eight o'clock? I
wish much to see you and her and J. H. and my little boy once more; and
then, if she is not what she once was to me, I care not if I die that
instant. I will conclude here till to-morrow, as I am getting into my
old melancholy.--

It is all over, and I am my own man, and yours ever--

PART III

ADDRESSED TO J. S. K.----

My dear K----, It is all over, and I know my fate. I told you I would
send you word, if anything decisive happened; but an impenetrable
mystery hung over the affair till lately. It is at last (by the merest
accident in the world) dissipated; and I keep my promise, both for your
satisfaction, and for the ease of my own mind.

You remember the morning when I said "I will go and repose my sorrows at
the foot of Ben Lomond"--and when from Dumbarton Bridge its
giant-shadow, clad in air and sunshine, appeared in view. We had a
pleasant day's walk. We passed Smollett's monument on the road (somehow
these poets touch one in reflection more than most military
heroes)--talked of old times; you repeated Logan's beautiful verses to
the cuckoo,* which I wanted to compare with Wordsworth's, but my courage
failed me; you then told me some passages of an early attachment which
was suddenly broken off; we considered together which was the most to be
pitied, a disappointment in love where the attachment was mutual or one
where there has been no return, and we both agreed, I think, that the
former was best to be endured, and that to have the consciousness of it
a companion for life was the least evil of the two, as there was a
secret sweetness that took off the bitterness and the sting of regret,
and "the memory of what once had been" atoned, in some measure, and at
intervals, for what "never more could be." In the other case, there was
nothing to look back to with tender satisfaction, no redeeming trait,
not even a possibility of turning it to good. It left behind it not
cherished sighs, but stifled pangs. The galling sense of it did not
bring moisture into the eyes, but dried up the heart ever after. One
had been