make a
statement of facts, sometimes very interesting to ourselves and our
friends, for the want of a record of the places where we were, and of
things that occurred on such and such a day! How often does it happen
that we get into disagreeable disputes about things that have passed,
and about the time and other circumstances attending them! As a thing of
mere curiosity, it is of some value, and may frequently prove of very
great utility. It demands not more than a minute in the twenty-four
hours; and that minute is most agreeably and advantageously employed. It
tends greatly to produce regularity in the conducting of affairs: it is
a thing demanding a small portion of attention _once in every day_; I
myself have found it to be attended with great and numerous benefits,
and I therefore strongly recommend it to the practice of every reader.

LETTER III

TO A LOVER

82. There are two descriptions of Lovers on whom all advice would be
wasted; namely, those in whose minds passion so wholly overpowers reason
as to deprive the party of his sober senses. Few people are entitled to
more compassion than young men thus affected: it is a species of
insanity that assails them; and, when it produces self-destruction,
which it does in England more frequently than in all the other countries
in the world put together, the mortal remains of the sufferer ought to
be dealt with in as tender a manner as that of which the most merciful
construction of the law will allow. If SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY'S remains
were, as they were, in fact, treated as those of a person labouring
under '_temporary mental derangement_,' surely the youth who destroys
his life on account of unrequited love, ought to be considered in as
mild a light! SIR SAMUEL was represented, in the evidence taken before
the Coroner's Jury, to have been _inconsolable for the loss of his
wife_; that this loss had so dreadful an effect upon his mind, that it
_bereft him of his reason_, made life insupportable, and led him to
commit the act of _suicide_: and, on _this ground alone_, his _remains_
and his _estate_ were rescued from the awful, though just and wise,
sentence of the law. But, unfortunately for the reputation of the
administration of that just and wise law, there had been, only about two
years before, a _poor_ man, at Manchester, _buried in crossroads_, and
under circumstances which entitled his remains to mercy much more
clearly than in the case of SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY.