e epigrams, and
invented more choice incidents on that happy evening, than, if now
remembered, would suffice to pay my tailor's bill, when collated for
Bentley's Miscellany, and illustrated by Cruikshank--alas! that, like the
good liquor that seasoned them, both are gone by, and I am left but to
chronicle their memory of the fun, in dulness, and counterfeit the
effervescence of the grape juice, by soda water. One thing, however, is
certain--we formed a most agreeable party; and if a feeling of gloom ever
momentarily shot through my mind, it was, that evenings like these came
so rarely in this work-a-day world--that each such should be looked on,
as our last.

If I had not already shown myself up to my reader as a garcon volage of
the first water, perhaps I should now hesitate about confessing that I
half regretted the short space during which it should be my privilege to
act as the guide and mentor of my two friends. The impetuous haste which
I before felt necessary to exercise in reaching Paris immediately, was
not tempered by prudent thoughts about travelling at night, and
reflections about sun-stroke by day; and even moments most devoted to the
object of my heart's aspirations were fettered by the very philosophic
idea, that it could never detract from the pleasure of the happiness that
awaited me, if I travelled on the primrose path to its attainment. I
argued thus: if Lady Jane be true--if--if, in a word, I am destined to
have any success in the Callonby family, then will a day or two more not
risk it. My present friends I shall, of course, take leave of at Paris,
where their own acquaintances await them; and, on the other hand, should
I be doomed once more to disappointment, I am equally certain I should
feel no disposition to form a new attachment. Thus did I reason, and
thus I believed; and though I was a kind of consultation opinion among my
friends in "suits of love," I was really then unaware that at no time is
a man so prone to fall in love as immediately after his being jilted. If
common sense will teach us not to dance a bolero upon a sprained ancle,
so might it also convey the equally important lesson, not to expose our
more vital and inflammatory organ to the fire the day after its being
singed.

Reflections like these did not occur to me at this moment; besides that I
was "going the pace" with a forty-horse power of agreeability that left
me little time for thought--least of all, if serious. So