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Rh people romantic. While I acknowledge that the gardens of Iran exist, I beg leave also to state that they lie in a desert—appear but for a moment—and then vanish in their beauty for ever. Every fable has its moral; and that of love is disappointment, weariness, or disgust. Young people would avoid falling in love, if—as some story-book observes—young people would but consider. When Cromwell sent his ambassador to Spain, under circumstances which somewhat endangered his head, he encouraged him by stating, 'That if his head fell, that of every Spaniard in his dominions should fall too.' 'A thousand thanks,' returned the diplomatist; 'but among all these heads there may not be one to fit me.'

What he said of heads may also be said of experience—there is a large stock on hand; but, somehow or other, nobody's experience ever suits us except our own.

Don Henriquez was a brave and honourable man, with a degree of information rare among his countrymen; but he was not at all the person to be placed in uncommon circumstances. He had seen enough of England to have caught impressions, rather than convictions, of the advantages of a free people; and a good constitution seemed equally necessary to the nation and the individual. But his ideas of liberty were more picturesque than practical. He dwelt on the rights of the people, without considering whether that people were in a state to enforce, or even receive them. He declaimed on tyranny like an ancient, on information like a modern. He forgot that, for change to be useful, it must be gradual; and while enlarging on the enlightened intellect of the present time, he overlooked the fact, that our ancestors could not have been altogether so very wrong, or that society could not have gone on at all.

He had a vivid imagination—and this threw a charm, rather than a light, around the subjects it investigated. He was one of those who feel instead of think, and therefore invest their theories with a reality