Here he turned to me with a look of seriousness, and said, “Beware, young man, how you trust to your own strength and your own talents; for however noble it may be to do so, let it be in the open field, before you are driven into a corner, where your arms may come in contact with the thorns and the angles of the hedges.

“About this time, too, I fell in love—­yes, fell in love; for I just beheld the fair object, and I was a dead man, or a new man, or anything you will.  Frequently as I have looked and acted like a fool, I believe I never did so so strikingly as at that moment.  She was a beautiful girl—­a very angel of light—­about five feet three inches high, and my own age.  Heaven knows how I ever had courage to declare my passion; for I put it off day after day, and week after week, always preparing a new speech against the next time of meeting her, until three or four rivals stepped forward before me.  At length I did speak, and never was love more clumsily declared.  I told her in three words; then looked to the ground, and again in her face most pitifully.  She received my addresses just as saucily as a pretty girl could do.  But it were useless to go over our courtship; it was the only happy period of my existence, and every succeeding day has been misery.  Matters were eventually brought to a bearing, and the fatal day of final felicity appointed.  I was yet young, and my love possessed all the madness of a first passion.  She not only occupied my heart, but my whole thoughts; I could think of nothing else, speak of nothing else, and, what was worse, do nothing else:  it burned up the very capabilities of action, and rendered my native indolence yet more indolent.  However, the day came (and a bitter stormy day it was), the ceremony was concluded, and the honeymoon seemed to pass away in a fortnight.

“About twelve months after our marriage, Heaven (as authors say) blest our loves with a son and, I had almost said, heir.  Deplorable patrimony!—­heir of his mother’s features—­the sacrifice of his father’s weakness.”  Kean could not have touched this last burst.  The father, the miserable man, parental affection, agony, remorse, repentance, were expressed in a moment.

A tear was hurrying down his withered cheek as he dashed it away with his dripping sleeve.  “I am a weak old fool,” said he, endeavouring to smile; for there was a volatile gaiety in his disposition, which his sorrows had subdued, but not extinguished.  “Yet, my boy! my poor dear Willie!—­I shall never—­no, I shall never see him again!” Here he again wept; and had nature not denied me that luxury, I should have wept too, for the sake of company.  After a pause, he again proceeded:—­