s, the woods, the mountains, the face of Nature,
cast in the fresh yet giant mould of a new and unpolluted world; and,
amidst those most silent and mighty temples of THE GREAT GOD, the lone
spirit of Love reigning and brightening over all?

BOOK II.

It is dangerous for women, however wise it be for men, "to commune with
their own hearts, and to be still!" Continuing to pursue the follies of
the world had been to Emily more prudent than to fly them; to pause, to
separate herself from the herd, was to discover, to feel, to murmur at
the vacuum of her being; and to occupy it with the feelings which it
craved, could in her be but the hoarding a provision for despair.

Married, before she had begun the bitter knowledge of herself, to a man
whom it was impossible to love, yet deriving from nature a tenderness
of soul, which shed itself over everything around, her only escape from
misery had been in the dormancy of feeling. The birth of her son had
opened to her a new field of sensations, and she drew the best charm of
her own existence from the life she had given to another. Had she not
met Falkland, all the deeper sources of affection would have flowed into
one only and legitimate channel; but those whom he wished to fascinate
had never resisted his power, and the attachment he inspired was in
proportion to the strength and ardour of his own nature.

It was not for Emily Mandeville to love such as Falkland without feeling
that from that moment a separate and selfish existence had ceased to be.
Our senses may captivate us with beauty; but in absence we forget, or
by reason we can conquer, so superficial an impression. Our vanity may
enamour us with rank; but the affections of vanity are traced in sand;
but who can love Genius, and not feel that the sentiments it excites
partake of its own intenseness and its own immortality? It arouses,
concentrates, engrosses all our emotions, even to the most subtle and
concealed. Love what is common, and ordinary objects can replace or
destroy a sentiment which an ordinary object has awakened. Love what we
shall not meet again amidst the littleness and insipidity which surround
us, and where can we turn for a new object to replace that which has no
parallel upon earth? The recovery from such a delirium is like return
from a fairy land; and still fresh in the recollections of a bright and
immortal clime, how can we endure the dulness of that human existence to
which for the fu