Women, like sealing-wax, are susceptible of any impression, with those they love. But, this love must not be gilded with tinsel; nor must it flame before it burns. It's best and most eloquent language is silence; which, from slow impulses, insinuates itself into the heart. Alloy, however, sometimes increases this passion, as copper increases the ductility of gold. For women love human beings better than angels. Love is lessened by a too lively consciousness of inferiority.

VII.

Sophocles having been asked, whether he still enjoyed the pleasure of love, replied, "I thank the gods, that I have escaped its wild and furious tyranny." Sophocles was either unsuccessful in his addresses, or as ignorant of its refinements, as were most of his countrymen. Theognis, on the other hand, assured his companions, that "he was the richest and happiest of men, who possessed a gentle and a virtuous wife." Love and aversion is not so much bodily, as it is mental, attraction and repulsion. The love of something is, in fact, necessary to the human heart. If a woman has no lover, she keeps a dog: and if a prisoner has no associate, like the Count de Lauzun, he forms a friendship with a spider.

Love, too, is the best of all tutors. Raphael Mengs' picture of Venus and Mercury teaching Cupid to read, (a copy from Corregio) struck me, therefore, as being defective. Love is the parent, not the child; the tutor, not the pupil. It is the god of benevolence,

chastity, fortitude, discretion, fidelity, patience, piety, and veracity. And where love is not the parent of these, love is itself an illegitimate child. Love, too, is not an instigator to cruel deeds, and an incentive to military glory, as it has been represented: though desire is. But in a just cause it is active in attack, and still more vigorous in defence. The barbarians loved their wives better than the Greeks and Romans; and Tacitus, Florus Vopiscus, Olaus Magnus, and Saxo Grammaticus, give repeated instances of women, fighting by the side of their husbands, and obtaining victories.

"There are a thousand ways," said Mons. Neckar, "in which we may express our hatred, our contempt, or our indignation: but only one mode of saying, 'I love you,' that can be believed."" So curiously does the organ of speech embody the feelings of the heart. Bodily strength pays homage to beauty; but mental strength pays homage to love: for a union of these only can make the heart overflow with felicity. "Husband," "father," "wife," mother," become the most sacred of appellations: and objects, if so dignified by affection, however deficient in beauty, seem as if they sprung from Gnidus, and were educated by the Graces.

1

-With strenuous watchfulness anticipate
All thy desires; to shew myself, at all times,
Whichever most thou wishest me to be:
Consort, protector, brother, friend, or servant,
Behold to what I pledge myself:-in this,
And this alone, my glory, and my life,
Will be all centered..

66

Alfieri.-Lamb.

Love, like this, endureth to the end of life: but the phantasm, which most men call love, is like the pith of plants which diminishes as the tree grows old, and at length disappears. And here I cannot refrain from alluding to a beautiful series of coincidences, which occurred at Lanark, in Scotland, in the relative lives of William and Mary Douglas. They were born in the same hour, and brought into the world by the same midwife: they were baptized together, at the same font; married in the church of their native village; lived to the age of one hundred years without illness; died as they were reposing in the same bed; and were buried under the same font, at which they had been baptized.

Love is nearly allied to benevolence. Men have little need of frugality in the indulgence of satisfacfactions, arising out of the heart or of the mind. The deeper, and the oftener, they drink, the purer and more copiously will the fountain flow. In the amplitude of large cities there is peace and independence: social life being there divested, in a great measure, of impertinence, the soul may soar, or melt, at its discretion. A just method of reasoning, and a true standard of observation, in respect to mankind, are presented; and though the mind is wrapt in wonder, when it contemplates scenes, in which Nature exhibits magnificent forms, and others, in which she seems to have abandoned the universe, the soul seems, like that of Elijah, to be more worthy of heaven, without' first tasting of death, when it throws into the bosom of want the refinements of education; when it elicits

from the eyelid of distress the tear of delight; and illumines the countenance of sorrow with the smile of satisfaction.

The clouds doe from our presence flye;

"Tis sunshine where we cast our eye;
Where'er we tread on earth below,

A rose or lily up doth grow.

Hawkins.

CHAPTER II.

Ir the hunter delight in the society of the hunter if the idle and the dissipated derive an illegitimate satisfaction, when recalling to their mutual recollection the follies of their youth, and feel themselves entitled to the friendship of each other, because they have partaken of the same vicious indulgences; with how much more pleasure shall polite and accomplished minds remember those persons who are, in any way, connected with scenes, which have administered to their happiness! If such are their associations, in regard to casual acquaintances, how strongly must those recollections cement the friendships, which have previously been awakened by mutual esteem! By elevating the character of thought, and by giving a decided tone to all the finer sentiments of the heart, recollections of this nature confirm the affections of those, whom we have the happiness to rank in the number of our friends :-friends not formed in courts, tried at banquets, nor cemented by slavish compliances; but contracted with those

with whose minds and feelings ours intimately harmonize; and to whom we are united by similar habits, opinions, and reflections, and by the indulgence of mutual benevolence to all mankind.

II.

Eschylus, in exhibiting the love of Electra for Orestes, paints, in a lively and affectionate manner, that species of friendship, which, of all others, is the most holy and the most enduring, viz. the friendship of brothers and sisters.

Thou dearest pledge of this imperial house,
Pride of my soul ;-for my tongue must speak ;-
The love my father shar'd, my mother shar'd,
Is centred all in thee. Thou art my father,
My mother, sister, my support, my glory,
My only aid.

Eschylus.-The Choephora.-Potter.

Friendship, which, next to love, is the most sacred of all moral bonds, and one of the most affecting of all moral obligations, has been a favourite theme in every age. Who is there so unlearned, as to be unacquainted with the excellent axioms of Ecclesiasticus; Cicero's celebrated Treatise; or, with Horace's consolatory Ode on the Death of Quintilius? Plutarch esteems it an union of two bodies in one soul, or one soul in two bodies! Aristotle associated it with virtue; Pythagoras called it an immortal union; and even Voltaire, (of a warm head, but of a cold and calculating heart), said, that it supplies our wants, and multiplies our being. It has