CHAPTER XII.
Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth! -- Midsummer Night's Dream.
The celebrated passage which we have prefixed to this chapter has, like most observations of the same author, its foundation in real experience.
The period at which love is formed for the first time, and felt most strongly, is seldom that at which there is much prospect of its being brought to a happy issue.

The state of artificial society opposes many complicated obstructions to early marriages; and the chance is very great, that such obstacles prove insurmountable.

In fine, there are few men who do not look back in secret to some period of their youth, at which a sincere and early affection was repulsed, or betrayed, or become abortive from opposing circumstances.

It is these little passages of secret history, which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, scarce permitting us, even in the most busy or the most advanced period of life, to listen with total indifference to a tale of true love.
Julian Peveril had so fixed his affections, as to insure the fullest share of that opposition which early attachments are so apt to encounter.

Yet nothing so natural as that he should have done so.