Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor --thank Heaven!--always Storm.

But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?

I sat down and tried to rest. I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing tonight, a new one opening tomorrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.

I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little.

If you like poetry let it be first rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith Pope (if you will though I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth and Southey. Now Ellen don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare, and Byron. Both these were great Men and their works are like themselves, You will know how to chuse the good and avoid the evil, the finest
passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting you will never wish to read them over twice.

[I]n his presence I thoroughly lived.

Well had Solomon said,'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.