pered to your ear and your tenderness
have blushed its reply. The passion concealed in darkness was revealed
in danger; and the love, which in life was forbidden, was our comfort
amidst the terrors of death! And that long and holy kiss, the first,
the only moment in which our lips shared the union of our souls!--do not
tell me that it is wrong to recall it!--do not tell me that I sin,
when I own to you the hours I sit alone, and nurse the delirium of that
voluptuous remembrance. The feelings you have excited may render me
wretched, but not guilty; for the love of you can only hallow the
heart--it is a fire which consecrates the altar on which it burns. I
feel, even from the hour that I loved, that my soul has become more
pure. I could not believe that I was capable of so unearthly an
affection, or that the love of woman could possess that divinity of
virtue which I worship in yours. The world is no fosterer of our young
visions of purity and passion: embarked in its pursuits, and acquainted
with its pleasures, while the latter sated me with what is evil, the
former made me incredulous to what is pure. I considered your sex as
a problem which my experience had already solved. Like the French
philosophers, who lose truth by endeavouring to condense it, and who
forfeit the moral from their regard to the maxim, I concentrated my
knowledge of women into aphorism and antitheses; and I did not dream
of the exceptions, if I did not find myself deceived in the general
conclusion. I confess that I erred; I renounce from this moment
the colder reflections of my manhood,--the fruits of a bitter
experience,--the wisdom of an inquiring yet agitated life. I return with
transport to my earliest visions of beauty and love; and I dedicate them
upon the altar of my soul to you, who have embodied, and concentrated,
and breathed them into life!

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.

Monday.--This is the most joyless day in the whole week; for it can
bring me no letter from him. I rise listlessly, and read over again and
again the last letter I received from him--useless task! it is graven on
my heart! I long only for the day to be over, because to-morrow I may,
perhaps, hear from him again. When I wake at night from my disturbed and
broken sleep, I look if the morning is near; not because it gives light
and life, but because it may bring tidings of him. When his letter is
brought to me, I keep it for minutes unopened--I