nature has burst out into
blossom. The imaginative literature of the modern world centres chiefly
about this human crisis; and its importance in literature is but a
reflection of its importance in life. It is, as it were, the sun of the
world of sentiment--the source of its lights and colours, and also of
its shadows. It is the crown of man's existence; it gives life its
highest quality; and, if we can believe what those who have known it
tell us, earth under its influence seems to be melting into, and to be
almost joined with, heaven.

All this language, however, about love, no matter how true in a certain
sense it may be, is emphatically true about it in a certain sense only,
and is by no means to be taken without reserve. It is emphatically not
true about love in general, but only about love as modified in a certain
special way. The form of the affection, so to speak, is more important
than the substance of it. It will need but little consideration to show
us that this is so. Love is a thing that can take countless forms; and
were not the form, for the modern world, the thing of the first
importance, the praise bestowed upon all forms of it would be equal, or
graduated only with reference to intensity. But the very reverse of this
is the case really. In our estimate of an affection, its intensity,
though doubtless of great importance, is yet of an importance that is
clearly secondary. Else things that the modern world regards as the most
abominable might be on a level with the things it regards as most pure
and holy; the lovers of Athens might even put to shame with their
passion the calm sacramental constancy of many a Christian pair; and the
whole fabric of modern morals would be undermined. For, according to
the modern conception of morals, love can not only give life its highest
quality, but its lowest also. If it can raise man to the angels, it can
also sink him below the beasts; and as to its intensity, it is a force
which will carry him in the one direction just as well as the other.
Kind and not degree is the first thing needful. It is the former, and
not the latter, that essentially separates David and Jonathan from
Harmodius and Aristogeiton, St. Elizabeth from Cleopatra, the beloved
disciple from Antinous. How shall we love? is the great question for us.
It comes long before, How much shall we love?

Let us imagine a bride and bridegroom of the type that would now be most
highly reverenced, and try to un