m the excess of feeling. We cannot re-illumine ashes! I
can gaze upon her dream-like beauty, and not experience a single desire
which can sully the purity of my worship. I listen to her voice when
it melts in endearment over her birds, her flowers, or, in a deeper
devotion, over her child; but my heart does not thrill at the tenderness
of the sound. I touch her hand, and the pulses of my own are as calm as
before. Satiety of the past is our best safeguard from the temptations
of the future; and the perils of youth are over when it has acquired
that dulness and apathy of affection which should belong only to the
insensibility of age.

Such were Falkland's opinions at the time he wrote. Ah! what is so
delusive as our affections? Our security is our danger--our defiance
our defeat! Day after day he went to E-------. He passed the mornings
in making excursions with Emily over that wild and romantic country by
which they were surrounded; and in the dangerous but delicious stillness
of the summer twilights, they listened to the first whispers of their
hearts.

In his relationship to Lady Margaret, Falkland found his excuse for the
frequency of his visits: and even Mrs. Dalton was so charmed with the
fascination of his manner, that (in spite of her previous dislike) she
forgot to inquire how far his intimacy at E------ was at variance with
the proprieties of the world she worshipped, or in what proportion it
was connected with herself.

It is needless for me to trace through all its windings the formation
of that affection, the subsequent records of which I am about to relate.
What is so unearthly, so beautiful, as the first birth of a woman's
love? The air of heaven is not purer in its wanderings--its sunshine not
more holy in its warmth. Oh! why should it deteriorate in its nature,
even while it increases in its degree? Why should the step which prints,
sully also the snow? How often, when Falkland met that guiltless yet
thrilling eye, which revealed to him those internal secrets that Emily
was yet awhile too happy to discover; when, like a fountain among
flowers, the goodness of her heart flowed over the softness of her
manner to those around her, and the benevolence of her actions to those
beneath; how often he turned away with a veneration too deep for the
selfishness of human passion, and a tenderness too sacred for its
desires! It was in this temper (the earliest and the most fruitless
prognostic of real love) th