of expediency. The passions that endure flash like the
lightning: they scorch the soul, but it is warmed for ever. Miserable
man whose love rises by degrees upon the frigid morning of his mind!
Some hours indeed of warmth and lustre may perchance fall to his lot;
some moments of meridian splendour, in which he basks in what he deems
eternal sunshine. But then how often overcast by the clouds of care, how
often dusked by the blight of misery and misfortune! And certain as the
gradual rise of such affection is its gradual decline and melancholy
setting. Then, in the chill, dim twilight of his soul, he execrates
custom; because he has madly expected that feelings could be habitual
that were not homogeneous, and because he has been guided by the
observation of sense, and not by the inspiration of sympathy.

Amid the gloom and travail of existence suddenly to behold a beautiful
being, and as instantaneously to feel an overwhelming conviction that
with that fair form for ever our destiny must be entwined; that there is
no more joy but in her joy, no sorrow but when she grieves; that in her
sigh of love, in her smile of fondness, hereafter all is bliss; to
feel our flaunty ambition fade away like a shrivelled gourd before her
vision; to feel fame a juggle and posterity a lie; and to be prepared at
once, for this great object, to forfeit and fling away all former hopes,
ties, schemes, views; to violate in her favour every duty of society;
this is a lover, and this is love! Magnificent, sublime, divine
sentiment! An immortal flame burns in the breast of that man who adores
and is adored. He is an ethereal being. The accidents of earth touch him
not. Revolutions of empire, changes of creed, mutations of opinion,
are to him but the clouds and meteors of a stormy sky. The schemes and
struggles of mankind are, in his thinking, but the anxieties of pigmies
and the fantastical achievements of apes. Nothing can subdue him. He
laughs alike at loss of fortune, loss of friends, loss of character. The
deeds and thoughts of men are tor him equally indifferent. He does not
mingle in their paths of callous bustle, or hold himself responsible to
the airy impostures before which they bow down. He is a mariner who, on
the sea of life, keeps his gaze fixedly on a single star; and if that do
not shine, he lets go the rudder, and glories when his barque descends
into the bottomless gulf.

Yes! it was this mighty passion that now raged in the heart