nstantly endowing
him with all the fresher breathings of her spiritual existence--like the
Rainbow of the Waterfall, that clothes, with its own celestial dyes, the
dark and shapeless mass of Rock upon whose bosom it appears to dwell!
faltering, trembling, quivering, fading, disappearing; returning,
resting;--glowing, yet never dazzling; liquid, yet sustained!

'It were all one
That I should love a bright particular star
And seek to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love!

This is the way in which these precious irradiations of joy beam and hover
over man; startled and frightened often out of the presence even of his
image while they thus adorn and decorate him; and then they love him for
what they fondly dream to be the halo of his proper spirit; for the light
and tenderness, the purity, the gentleness, the refinement and grace, that
have their life and element and colour, only in the deep yet overflowing
heart of Woman in her Love!

But then comes Wedlock; and often, with wedlock, comes marriage; or
succeeds it; the marriage that GOD bestowed on man in Eve, when, according
to that scriptural and exquisite conception, _they twain become one_. When
the Rock shall as by a miracle receive into all its crevices, interstices,
and pores, the beautiful existence that has played upon it! When the soul
of man opens at every noble passion in succession and at every pulse, to
embrace, imbibe, absorb, receive, possess, acquire, the being that we call
WOMAN! finds her in every former want, or present wish, or bright, or
unfrequented passage of the soul; now all occupied, all satisfied by her;
fancies thoughts to be his thoughts which are her thoughts; and blesses
himself, when he discovers it, that imaginations in themselves so sweet,
should in some visit of her delicate spirit have been breathed into his
ESSENCE from a source so pure! is near her, when distant; is present with
her, when absent; converses with her, without words; gazes upon her,
without sight; listens to her, without sound; watches her, without motion;
and has not yet lost her balmy presence when Death shall long have removed
forever that precious image from his corporal sense. This is MARRIAGE.

Out of this state descends that profound expression of the soul in Milton,
(GOD make us thankful for him!) w