love her, but
myself. She has robbed me of herself: shall she also rob me of my love
of her? Did I not live on her smile? Is it less sweet because it is
withdrawn from me? Did I not adore her every grace? Does she bend less
enchantingly, because she has turned from me to another? Is my love
then in the power of fortune, or of her caprice? No, I will have it
lasting as it is pure; and I will make a Goddess of her, and build a
temple to her in my heart, and worship her on indestructible altars, and
raise statues to her: and my homage shall be unblemished as her
unrivalled symmetry of form; and when that fails, the memory of it shall
survive; and my bosom shall be proof to scorn, as hers has been to pity;
and I will pursue her with an unrelenting love, and sue to be her slave,
and tend her steps without notice and without reward; and serve her
living, and mourn for her when dead. And thus my love will have shewn
itself superior to her hate; and I shall triumph and then die. This is
my idea of the only true and heroic love! Such is mine for her.

PERFECT LOVE

Perfect love has this advantage in it, that it leaves the possessor of
it nothing farther to desire. There is one object (at least) in which
the soul finds absolute content, for which it seeks to live, or dares to
die. The heart has as it were filled up the moulds of the imagination.
The truth of passion keeps pace with and outvies the extravagance of
mere language. There are no words so fine, no flattery so soft, that
there is not a sentiment beyond them, that it is impossible to express,
at the bottom of the heart where true love is. What idle sounds the
common phrases, adorable creature, angel, divinity, are? What a proud
reflection it is to have a feeling answering to all these, rooted in the
breast, unalterable, unutterable, to which all other feelings are light
and vain! Perfect love reposes on the object of its choice, like the
halcyon on the wave; and the air of heaven is around it.

FROM C. P., ESQ.

London, July 4th, 1822.

I have seen M----! Now, my dear H----, let me entreat and adjure you to
take what I have to tell you, FOR WHAT IT IS WORTH--neither for less,
nor more. In the first place, I have learned nothing decisive from him.
This, as you will at once see, is, as far as it goes, good. I am
either to hear from him, or see him again in a day or two; but I thought
you would like to know what passed inconclusive