sion, coming from the full heart and humanizing its affections, never. These latter among common things in relation to virtue, however trivial and minute, may be set down with applause. As an eminent writer says, "they are even a relief from literature-these fresh draughts from the sources of thought and sentiment. This kindly perception of the ridiculous, full of gentleness and sympathy; this healthful, joyous spirit of fellowship, come to us like the innocent and happy face of childhood in the presence of hard-thinking, self-occupied, care worn, sullen men, to recreate with a cheerful variety despondency and dejection." So far then we have found, that in least as in greatest things what is common is good. Excellent is the great common virtue of kindness; but every little thing that in some inexplicable way indicates its latent source within the mind, even to the turn of our phrases, though they may seem at first to have no connexion with it-the kind of words we use and the particular tone in which we utter them have their charm also.

CHAPTER VII.

THERE is need on approaching the next subject for standing on our guard against misrepresentation. It is a noble theme; but there are minds trained to misconstrue it as well as other things. Conscious of our right to introduce it, for a sense of truth is unacquainted with fear, we should begin by protesting against the imputations to which we may be exposed. We have not introduced it after a drunken feast, as it was once in a celebrated banquet, where the lofty purity of the subject triumphed over all associations. The speakers will not be dissipated intruders, as when Alcibiades staggered in to join in that discussion. We approach it as persons not to be scared by the abuse of words, but resolved rationally to distinguish truth from the misrepresentations of fear as well as of daring; and who seek with innocence, unterrified by the gross, sensual objections of men aspiring after spirituality to think, speak, and act in accordance with what common things proclaim to be the divine ideal.

We have not to look beyond the bower in which the friends are seated, to have our attention directed to this subject, which is here suggested by the order in which familiar things in relation to virtue are passing before us in detail. For it is love that has drawn them to these groves, and we may suppose them repeating the old dialogue, of which the stanzas are sung alternately:

"Come, let us here enjoy the shade,

For love in shadow best is made.

Though envy oft his shadow be,

None brooks the sun-light worse than he.

Where love doth shine there needs no sun,
All lights into his one doth run;
Without which all the world were dark;
Yet he himself is but a spark.

A spark to set whole worlds a fire,
Who more they burn, they more desire,
And have their being, their waste to see;

And waste still, that they still might be."

We need not at the outset spend many words to show that love may be classed among common things, and how, as Victorian says in the Spanish Student,

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Love is ever busy with his shuttle;
Is ever weaving into life's dull warp

Bright, gorgeous flowers, and scenes Arcadian;
Hanging our gloomy prison-house about
With tapestries, that make its walls dilate
In never-ending vistas of delight."

Indeed, as another poet says,

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common as light is love,

And its familiar voice wearies not ever."

Common lovers are joined in brotherhood, as philosophers themselves remark, with all the highest and noblest of the human race, excluding absolutely no one that merits praise; for all such persons love alike, only some seek immortality by thoughts, and having a posterity like that which Homer and Hesiod, and the other great poets and benefactors of mankind,

as well as the divine men of Christian times, have left behind them in their works; for many choose rather to be the parents of such children than of those in human shape; for religious honours have often been rendered to them on account of such children, but on account of those in human shape, never. There are of course exceptions to the power of this influence; there are individuals to whom the love of the beautiful is, in any order, strange and inconceivable, and must be always so. Their lover's seat is in a counting-house, " which, like most spots beyond the pale of female jurisdiction, is a comfortless-looking place." Their lover's walk is some 'Change-alley, where you are more likely to meet Plutus than Cupid. Would you listen to their courtship, as when Euphues overheard that between Sir Argent Scrape and Lady Covet? It is the same scene always. "You were saying," observes the fair one, "you made no doubt but shortly to enjoy your kinsman Eagery's estate; that were a fine addition to your land; they say it goes at fifteen hundred pounds a year." ""Tis true," replies the strange wooer, "I can deliver him up to the law, and by bribes prevent the chance of his escape. Excellent! You must not spare a little money. Such things may well be done, else what were money good for *?" There are persons thus who might say with Evadne, "I love with my ambition, not with my eyes." They know not, therefore, if we may speak in the sprightly way of old times, what it is "to love glass without a G," as the proverb says, or what it is to fetch their breath as short as a new-taken sparrow, or what it is to see

ease.

"The light that shines from loving eyes upon

Eyes that love back, till they can see no more t."

There are others again who seem naturally averse to all impressions excepting those resulting from egotism and the desire of These say with Lazarillo in the Woman-hater, "Hunger and love are alike pleasing; and let our philosophers say what they will, are one kind-only hunger is the safest-hunger is so free from all dangers, so full of hopes, joys, and ticklings, that my life is not so dear to me as his acquaintance." There are

others again who court only Reason; and to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days; the more the pity, that some honest neighbour will not make them friends. You may strike off from the ablative of the substantive "amor" a letter on the left hand successively, and find four words expressing all the characters of love, but the result has no realization in them. However, it is needless to dwell The country and the town, the

upon phenomenal exceptions.

hamlet and the city, will yield assent to the justice of classing love among the common things of human life; for

"Love rules the town, the camp, the grove,

And men below, and saints above;

For love is heaven, and heaven is love."

When Goldsmith paints his village, he seems to think that the scene would not be complete unless he introduced

"The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath its shade

For talking age, and whisp'ring lovers made."

He deems it as necessary in his picture as

"The decent church that topt the neighb'ring hill;"

and that the life in cities, in spite of its cares, its distractions, and its ambition, is not exempted from the operation of this great common law that sways humanity can be found attested in all our literature, to speak not of daily experience. True love, innocent love, can find an Arcadia every where to meet in, though timidly it will ask its confidants if it should meet again, as in the lines, "Do you think I should go?" It confesses it was happy, though now it is afraid, and though its tears fall, it knows not why; it recalls the sweet words at parting, the sincerity of look and tone, the promise to return understood, and it resolves to be with Heaven, and those that savour of it, its own counsellor.

"How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night

Like softest music to attending ears!"

So it is felt in that scene in the Heir, where Leucothoë says to Philocles,

"East from the city, by a river's side
Not distant half a mile, there stands a grove,
Where, often riding by, I have observ'd
A little hermitage; there will I stay,
If I be first; if you, do you the like:
Let th' hour be ten."

And when she comes there she says,

"There is no creature here, I am the first.
Methinks this sad and solitary place

Should strike a terror to such hearts as mine;
But love has made me bold. The time has been
In such a place as this I should have fear'd
Each rolling leaf, and trembled at a reed
Stirr'd in the moonshine: my fearful fancy
Would frame a thousand apparitions,

And work some fear out of my very shadow."

There are of course antagonistic passions, which, instead of correcting and modifying, as they were intended to do, wholly interrupt for a time the designs of nature.

"Sir Harold the hunter was rarely seen

At rest in his lordly home,

But roughly clad in his forester's green
Far over the hills he'd roam :

Merrily caroll'd this bold young knight,
My love, no bride for me;

I'll ne'er go wooing to beauty bright,
But live as a hunter free."

Yet the end of the song shows him in a different character.

"Merrily carols the gay young knight,

List, dearest Ella, to me;

"Tis better to kneel to beauty bright,
Than live as a hunter free."

Those who devote their youth to an uninterrupted course of wild and savage amusements, those who seek in the quiet shades of study to be separated from ordinary lovers, are, often