, in whose
glacial walls some gentle hand has buried the last flowers of
autumn." In yon cenotaph, profusely covered with ornamental texts
from the Koran, sleeps the lamented bride of the Indies. "Her lord
lies beside her, in a less costly but loftier casket; and the two
tombs are enclosed by a lattice of white marble, which is cut and
carved as though it were of the softest substance in the world. A
light burns in the tombs, and garlands of flowers are laid over the
rich imitations of themselves. Hark as you whisper gently, there
rolls through the obscure vault overhead a murmur like that of the
sea on a pebbly beach in summer. A white bearded priest, who never
raises his eyes from his book as we pass, suddenly reads out a verse
from the Koran. Hark! How an invisible choir takes it up, till the
reverberated echoes swell into a full volume of sound, as though some
congregation of the skies were chanting their hymns above our heads.
The eye fills and the lip quivers, we know not why: a sigh and a tear
are the tribute which every heart that can be moved to pity, or has
thrilled with love, must pay to the builder of the Taj."

Who that reads this tender romance of love and loss, pride and grief
and peerless memorial, will not sometimes amidst enchanted
recollections of Nala and Damayanti, Haroun Al Raschid and Zobeide,
Shahriar and Scheherazade in his recurring thoughts allow a place for
the imperfectly known but fascinating story of Shah Jehan and
Moomtaza Mahul?

PLATONIC LOVE; OR, THE MARRIAGE OF SOULS.

IN the further consideration of these genial attachments of women
with persons not of their own sex, we come to those whose relation is
that of a wholly free and elective friendship, a friendship with no
intermixture either of hereditary connections or of family
obligations. This brings us directly to an examination of that
species of affection celebrated through the world as Platonic love;
on which so many false judgments, inadequate judgments, coarse
judgments, have been pronounced by partial observers and critics. If,
in this discussion of the relations of affection between men and
women, delicate topics are handled, and some things said from which a
squeamish reader may shrink, the vital importance of the matter and
the motive of the treatment furnish the only needful apology. Prudery
is the parsimony of a shrivelled heart, and is scarcely worthy of
respect. The subject of the relations of sentiment and passion