his own soul
and hers to obtain, might bring him a momentary transport, but not a
permanent happiness. There is always this difference in the love of
women and of men; that in the former, when once admitted, it engrosses
all the sources of thought, and excludes every object but itself; but
in the latter, it is shared with all the former reflections and feelings
which the past yet bequeaths us, and can neither (however powerful be
its nature) constitute the whole of our happiness or woe. The love
of man in his maturer years is not indeed so much a new emotion, as a
revival and concentration of all his departed affections to others; and
the deep and intense nature of Falkland's passion for Emily was linked
with the recollections of whatever he had formerly cherished as tender
or dear; it touched--it awoke a long chain of young and enthusiastic
feelings, which arose, perhaps, the fresher from their slumber. Who,
when he turns to recall his first and fondest associations; when he
throws off, one by one, the layers of earth and stone which have grown
and hardened over the records of the past: who has not been surprised to
discover how fresh and unimpaired those buried treasures rise again upon
his heart? They have been laid up in the storehouse of Time; they have
not perished; their very concealment has preserved them! _We remove the
lava, and the world of a gone day is before us_!

The evening of the day on which Falkland had written the above letter
was rude and stormy. The various streams with which the country abounded
were swelled by late rains into an unwonted rapidity and breadth;
and their voices blended with the rushing sound of the winds, and the
distant roll of the thunder, which began at last sullenly to subside.
The whole of the scene around L------ was of that savage yet sublime
character, which suited well with the wrath of the aroused elements.
Dark woods, large tracts of unenclosed heath, abrupt variations of
hill and vale, and a dim and broken outline beyond of uninterrupted
mountains, formed the great features of that romantic country.

It was filled with the recollections of his youth, and of the wild
delight which he took then in the convulsions and varieties of nature,
that Falkland roamed abroad that evening. The dim shadows of years,
crowded with concealed events and corroding reflections, all gathered
around his mind, and the gloom and tempest of the night came over him
like the sympathy of a friend