evice
on the ruined steps. He gives her a flower, and she bows her face down
over it almost to her knees. What did the flower say? Is it to hide a
blush? He looks delighted; and I almost fancy I see a proud colour on
his brow. As I gaze, these young people make for me a perfect idyl.
The generous, ungrudging sun, the melancholy ruin, decked, like mad
Lear, with the flowers and ivies of forgetfulness and grief, and
between them, sweet and evanescent, human truth and love!

Love!--does it yet walk the world, or is it imprisoned in poems and
romances? Has not the circulating library become the sole home of the
passion? Is love not become the exclusive property of novelists and
playwrights, to be used by them only for professional purposes?
Surely, if the men I see are lovers, or ever have been lovers, they
would be nobler than they are. The knowledge that he is beloved
should--_must_ make a man tender, gentle, upright, pure. While yet a
youngster in a jacket, I can remember falling desperately in love with
a young lady several years my senior,--after the fashion of youngsters
in jackets. Could I have fibbed in these days? Could I have betrayed
a comrade? Could I have stolen eggs or callow young from the nest?
Could I have stood quietly by and seen the weak or the maimed bullied?
Nay, verily! In these absurd days she lighted up the whole world for
me. To sit in the same room with her was like the happiness of
perpetual holiday; when she asked me to run a message for her, or to do
any, the slightest, service for her, I felt as if a patent of nobility
were conferred on me. I kept my passion to myself, like a cake, and
nibbled it in private. Juliet was several years my senior, and had a
lover--was, in point of fact, actually engaged; and, in looking back, I
can remember I was too much in love to feel the slightest twinge of
jealousy. I remember also seeing Romeo for the first time, and
thinking him a greater man than Caesar or Napoleon. The worth I
credited him with, the cleverness, the goodness, the everything! He
awed me by his manner and bearing. He accepted that girl's love coolly
and as a matter of course: it put him no more about than a crown and
sceptre puts about a king. What I would have given my life to
possess--being only fourteen, it was not much to part with after
all--he wore lightly, as he wore his gloves or his cane. It did not
seem a bit too good for him. His self-possession appalled me.