of entry.

Falling in love is an eminently impractical piece of business, and yet
Nature--who is no blunderer--generally introduces the boy and girl
into active adult life by this very door. In the depths of this
delicious foolishness the boyish heart grows to the measure of
manhood; bats and boats and "fellows" are forever deposed, and lovely
woman reigns in their stead. To boys, first love is, perhaps, more of
an event than to girls, for the latter have become familiar with the
routine of love-making long before they are seriously in love. They
sing about it in connection with flowers and angels and the moon; they
read Moore and Tennyson; they have perhaps been the confidants of
elder sisters. They are waiting for their lover, and even inclined to
be critical; but the first love of a boy is generally a surprise--he
is taken unawares, and surrenders at discretion.

Perhaps it is a good stimulant to faith in general, that in the very
outset of it we should believe in such an unreasonable and wonderful
thing as first love. Tertullian held some portions of his faith simply
"because they were impossible." It is no bad thing for a man to begin
life with a grand passion,--to imagine that no one ever loved before
him, and that no one who comes after him will ever love to the same
degree that he does.

This absolute passion, however, is not nearly so common as it might
well be; and Rochefoucauld was not far wrong when he compared it to
the ghosts that every one talks about, but very few see. It generally
arises out of extreme conditions of circumstances or feelings; its
food is contradiction and despair. It is doubtful if Romeo and Juliet
would have cared much for each other if the Montagues and Capulets had
been friends and allies, and the marriage of their children a
necessary State arrangement; and Byron is supported by all reasonable
evidence when he doubtfully inquires:

"If Laura, think you, had been Petrarch's wife,
Would he have written sonnets all his life?"

This excessive passion does not thrive well either in a high state of
civilization. "King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid" is the ballad of an
age when love really "ruled the court, the camp, the grove." The
nineteenth century is not such an age. At the very best, King
Cophetua would now do pretty much as the judge did with regard to Maud
Muller. Still no one durst say that even in such a case it was not
better to have loved and relinquished than never to