the thing without positive proof; if, in any case, there can be an apology in human nature itself, for such an act; this was that case.  We all know (as I observed at the time); that is to say, all of us who cannot wait to calculate upon the gains and losses of the affair; all of us, except those who are endowed with this provident frigidity, know well what youthful love is; and what its torments are, when accompanied by even the smallest portion of jealousy.  Every man, and especially every Englishman (for here we seldom love or hate by halves), will recollect how many mad pranks he has played; how many wild and ridiculous things he has said and done between the age of sixteen and that of twenty-two; how many times a kind glance has scattered all his reasoning and resolutions to the winds; how many times a cool look has plunged him into the deepest misery!  Poor SMITH, who was at this age of love and madness, might, surely, be presumed to have done the deed in a moment of ‘temporary mental derangement.’  He was an object of compassion in every humane breast:  he had parents and brethren and kindred and friends to lament his death, and to feel shame at the disgrace inflicted on his lifeless body:  yet, HE was pronounced to be a felo de se, or self-murderer, and his body was put into a hole by the way-side, with a stake driven down through it; while that of ROMILLY had mercy extended to it, on the ground that the act had been occasioned by ‘temporary mental derangement’ caused by his grief for the death of his wife!

84.  To reason with passion like that of the unfortunate SMITH, is perfectly useless; you may, with as much chance of success, reason and remonstrate with the winds or the waves:  if you make impression, it lasts but for a moment:  your effort, like an inadequate stoppage of waters, only adds, in the end, to the violence of the torrent:  the current must have and will have its course, be the consequences what they may.  In cases not quite so decided, absence, the sight of new faces, the sound of new voices, generally serve, if not as a radical cure, as a mitigation, at least, of the disease.  But, the worst of it is, that, on this point, we have the girls (and women too) against us!  For they look upon it as right that every lover should be a little maddish; and, every attempt to rescue him from the thraldom imposed by their charms, they look upon as an overt act of treason against their natural sovereignty.  No girl ever liked a young man less for his having done things foolish and wild and ridiculous, provided she was sure that love of her had been the cause:  let her but be satisfied upon this score, and there are very few things which she will not forgive.  And, though wholly unconscious of the fact, she is a great and sound philosopher after all.  For, from the nature of things, the rearing of a family always has been, is, and must ever be, attended with cares and troubles,