eriously
the shadows thicken round our own future doom! We cannot be prophets
to ourselves! With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I may
preserve to my solitude the light of a living smile!

....

Extracts from Letter II.

Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart, I invoke to
her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of space that have
furnished to poetry, which is the instinctive guess into creation, the
ideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph. And these were less pure than her own
thoughts, and less tender than her own love! They could not raise her
above her human heart, for THAT has a heaven of its own.

....

I have just looked on her in sleep,--I have heard her breathe my name.
Alas! that which is so sweet to others has its bitterness to me; for
I think how soon the time may come when that sleep will be without a
dream,--when the heart that dictates the name will be cold, and the
lips that utter it be dumb. What a twofold shape there is in love! If we
examine it coarsely,--if we look but on its fleshy ties, its enjoyments
of a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction,--how strange it
seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the world; that
it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influenced
all societies and all times; that to this the loftiest and loveliest
genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love, there
were no civilisation, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond the
brute's.

But examine it in its heavenlier shape,--in its utter abnegation of
self; in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate and
subtle in the spirit,--its power above all that is sordid in existence;
its mastery over the idols of the baser worship; its ability to create
a palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert, a summer in the
Iceland,--where it breathes, and fertilises, and glows; and the wonder
rather becomes how so few regard it in its holiest nature. What the
sensual call its enjoyments, are the least of its joys. True love is
less a passion than a symbol. Mejnour, shall the time come when I can
speak to thee of Viola as a thing that was?

....

Extract from Letter III.

Knowest thou that of late I have sometimes asked myself, "Is there no
guilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from our race?" It is true
that the higher we ascend the more hateful seem to us the vices of the
short-lived creepers of th