What the woman may have a right to claim, never enters his thought.

He never doubts the right or righteousness of aspiring to wed a woman between whose nature and his lies a gulf, wide as between an angel praising God, and a devil taking refuge from him in a swine.

Never a shadow of compunction crosses the leprous soul, as he stretches forth his arms to infold the clean woman! Ah, white dove! thou must lie for a while among the pots.

If only thy mother be not more to blame than the wretch that acts but after his kind! He does hot die of self-loathing! how then could he imagine the horror of disgust with which a glimpse of him such as he is would blast the soul of the woman ?' Yet has he--what is it ?--the virtue?
the pride?
or the cruel insolence ?--to shrink with rudest abhorrence from one who is, in nature and history and ruin, his fitting and proper mate! To see only how a man will be content to be himself the thing which he scorns another for being, might well be enough to send any one crying to the God there may be, to come between him and himself.

Lord! what a turning of things upside down there will be one day! What a setting of lasts first, and firsts last!.