SINGLE BLESSEDNESS.

MIS

"War and love are strange compeers-
War sheds blood, and love sheds tears;
War has spears, and love has darts,

War breaks heads, and love breaks hearts."

ISS EDGEWORTH remarks that "according to the Asiatics, Cupid's bow is strung with bees, which are apt to sting, sometimes fatally, those who meddle with it.

"Cupid is a casuist,

A mystic, and a cabalist

Can your lurking thoughts surprise,

And interpret your device.

He is versed in occult science,

In magic and in clairvoyance."*

This little mischievous mystic, this mighty enchanter, must have a heavy account to meet, if all that is charged against him is true. St. Cyprian describes him as "the devil's bird-lime to enslave men with: the siren who has beguiled men from St. Anthony to St.

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* Emerson.

Kevin." Love, which is his Christian name, has been the eloquent theme of the poet and the proser, too, in all ages; and notwithstanding the sneers of the monk and the cynic, with Plato at their head; enthusiasts and devotees innumerable, are yet found among the worshippers at his shrine. Stoics, monks and misanthropes affect to despise the passion as unworthy the dignity of a man; and even St. Jerome thought that a man could not combine the character of the Christian with that of the husband. The human heart must have mellowed since the days of the Fathers. The philosophic Coleridge affirms that "love is the completion of our being in another;" and the poet of Paradise thus describes the primal fair

"For contemplation he, and valor formed;

For softness she, and sweet attractive grace."

Southey thus defines the "tender passion :"-" Love may be likened to the sun, under whose influence one plan elaborates nutriment for man and another poison; and which, while it draws up pestilence from the marsh and jungle, and sets the simoon in motion over the desert, diffuses light, life and happiness over the healthy and cultivated regions of the earth.”

"To the one sex has been given in largest measure, strength to the other, beauty; to the one, aggressive force to the other, winning affections; to the one, the palm in the empire of thought-to the other, the palm in the empire of feeling."*

* Osgood.

"Woman is not undeveloped man;

But diverse; could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain whose dearest bond is this,
Not like to thee, but like in difference;

Yet in the long years like must they grow;

The man be more of woman, she of man;

He gain in sweetness and in moral height,

Nor lose the wrestling throes that throw the world;
The mental breath nor fail in childward care;
More as the double-natured poet each:

Till at the last she set herself to man,

Like perfect music unto noble words."*

"O Love! what are thou, Love? the ace of hearts,
Trumping earth's kings and queens, and all its suits;
A player, masquerading many parts

In life's odd carnival;-a boy that shoots
From ladies' eyes, such mortal woundy darts;

A gardener, pulling hearts'-case up by the roots;
The Puck of Passion-partly false, part real-
A marriageable maiden's 'beau ideal.'"

"Love," Petrarchy maintains, "is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good."

"Love is like the ocean

Ever fresh and strong;

Birth, and life and motion,

Speed, and strength and song,
With which the world surrounding,
It keeps it green and young."

* Tennyson.

Or take another version:

"Love reigneth in cot, in palace and hall,

Love beginneth with breath,

Ending not e'en in death,

O love, love,

Thou art ruler of all!"

But let us leave the poets for the present, since to seek a full definition from them will be hopeless, as we gather from one, who turns state's" evidence on the subject:

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"Love is something so divine

Description would but make it less;
'Tis what we know, but can't define,
"Tis what we feel, but can't express."

Sydney Smith said, "The imperishable, inexhaustible, unapproachable nature of love is shown in this-that all the million of love stories which have been written, have not one whit abated the immortal interest which there is in the rudest and stupidest love story. All the rest of the stupid thing may be the merest twaddle, but you can't help feeling a little interest, when you have taken up the book, as to whether Arabella will relent in favor of Augustus, and whether that wicked creature, man or woman, who is keeping them apart, will not be disposed of somehow."

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are but ministers of love,

And feed his sacred flame."

And, however much science or philosophy takes hold of our reason, as long as love rules in our hearts, we cannot quite banish the poet, or even the teller of love stories from our fireside.

"Nothing is to man so dear

As woman's love in good manner;
A good woman is man's bliss,
Where her love right and steadfast is.
There is no solace under heaven,
Of all that a man may * neven." +

Ford Bacon thus sagaciously sums up a learned disquisition upon the tender passion: "There is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love. corrupteth and embaseth it."

"Honor to woman! To her it is given

To garnish the earth with the roses of heaven!
All blessed, she linketh the loves in their choir-
In the veil of the graces her beauty concealing,
She tends on each altar that's hallowed to feeling,
And keeps ever living the fire."

"Woman flings around man the flowers of life, like the circling vines of the forest, which decorate the oak-trunks with their perfumed garlands.”

Love is as natural to woman as fragrance to a rose.

* Know.

Robert of Gloucester, 1400.