What constituted consent in an 1840s relationship? What were the power dynamics in a love affair? How can historians handle intimacy and emotion in their work? This Burns Lecture will open up a conversation around love, class, courtship, and moral conduct by drawing on an unpublished diary held at Trinity College Dublin. The diary is beautifully illustrated and is unique for the double-correspondence it contains between its author, a Trinity law student named James Christopher Fitzgerald Kenney, and his love interest, Mary Louisa McMahon. The diary is at times dark, and at times light-hearted, but it is always compelling.