or disgust, in that sense of freedom which told him that there were
homes for him elsewhere, I could perceive, I thought, in his
recollections of the "blue Olympus," some return of the restless and
roving spirit, which unhappiness or impatience always called up in his
mind. I had, indeed, at the time when he sent me those melancholy
verses, "There's not a joy this world can give," &c. felt some vague
apprehensions as to the mood into which his spirits then seemed to be
sinking, and, in acknowledging the receipt of the verses, thus tried to
banter him out of it:--"But why thus on your stool of melancholy again,
Master Stephen?--This will never do--it plays the deuce with all the
matter-of-fact duties of life, and you must bid adieu to it. Youth is
the only time when one can be melancholy with impunity. As life itself
grows sad and serious we have nothing for it but--to be as much as
possible the contrary."

My absence from London during the whole of this year had deprived me of
all opportunities of judging for myself how far the appearances of his
domestic state gave promise of happiness; nor had any rumours reached me
which at all inclined me to suspect that the course of his married life
hitherto exhibited less smoothness than such unions,--on the surface, at
least,--generally wear. The strong and affectionate terms in which, soon
after the marriage, he had, in some of the letters I have given,
declared his own happiness--a declaration which his known frankness left
me no room to question--had, in no small degree, tended to still those
apprehensions which my first view of the lot he had chosen for himself
awakened. I could not, however, but observe that these indications of a
contented heart soon ceased. His mention of the partner of his home
became more rare and formal, and there was observable, I thought,
through some of his letters a feeling of unquiet and weariness that
brought back all those gloomy anticipations with which I had, from the
first, regarded his fate. This last letter of his, in particular, struck
me as full of sad omen, and, in the course of my answer, I thus noticed
to him the impression it had made on me:--"And so you are a whole year
married!--

'It was last year I vow'd to thee
That fond impossibility.'

Do you know, my dear B., there was a something in your last letter--a
sort of unquiet mystery, as well as a want of your usual elasticity of
spirits--which has hung upon my mind unpl