He duly records his disgust with two British naval captains, one of whom was afterwards among his most valued and valuable friends, for wearing epaulettes, at that time confined to the French service.

"I hold them a little _cheap_," he said, "for putting on any part of a Frenchman's uniform." It is more interesting to notice that his impressionable fancy was again taken by an attractive young Englishwoman, the daughter of a clergyman named Andrews, living at St.Omer.

"Two very beautiful young ladies," he writes to Locker and to his brother; "I must take care of my heart, I assure you." "My heart is quite secured against the French beauties; I almost wish I could say as much for an English young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, with whom I am just going to dine, and spend the day.

She has such accomplishments that, had I a million of money, I am sure I should at this moment make her an offer of them." "The most accomplished woman my eyes ever beheld," he repeats, a month later.

The sentimental raptures of a young man about a handsome girl have in themselves too much of the commonplace to justify mention.
What is remarkable, and suggests an explanation of the deplorable vagary of his later years, is that his attachment to his wife, even in the days of courtship, elicited no such extravagance of admiration as that into which he freely lapses in his earlier fancies, and yet more in his last absorbing passion.