No other than the very heart of man,

As found among the best of those who live,

Not uninformed by books, good books though few,

In Nature's presence."

Love alone gives true and far-reaching vision. Of mere knowledge, Tennyson, inculcating the superiority of reverence and charity (or love), truly writes,

"What is she, cut from love and faith,
But some wild Pallas from the brain

"Of Demons ? Fiery-hot to burst
All barriers in her onward race

For power. Let her know her place
She is the second, not the first.

"A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by side
With wisdom, like the younger child;

"For she is earthly of the mind,

But wisdom heavenly of the soul."

"O divinest Christian charity!" says Dr. Barrow,1 "what tongue can worthily describe thy most heavenly beauty, thy incomparable sweetness, thy more than royal clemency and bounty? how nobly dost thou enlarge our mind beyond the narrow sphere of self and private regard into a universal care and complacence, making every man ourself, and all concernments to be ours?" Truly, it "opens in each heart a little heaven." 2

Such is the potent influence of love in the perception of beauty: its tendency is, ever itself to become assimilated to the harmony it contemplates-likeness and liking being terms nearly synonomous. Let us glance at love

under some of its manifestations; take, for example, these three stages of its development:

Intense love of outward Nature, at times fills the pensive heart with yearning tenderness, even affecting it to tears; or with deep unutterable joy, which feels to the core, and silently exults in the exuberance of beauty.

Love's glamourie1 brings the Lover yet more into harmony with the universe. Through the beloved one, he is enabled to love all mankind more, and every object now appears beautiful in his eyes, only as it resembles her.

Love to God-the highest love-purifies, exalts, and expands; or rather enlarges heart and soul, even carrying them at times into the region of beatific ecstasy. They who, in sincerity and truth, look

"Up to that sovereign light

From whose pure beams all perfect beauty springs," 2

thereby of necessity themselves become beautiful or godlike;

"These thus in fair each other far excelling

As to the highest they approach more near." 2

"Love," it has been truly said by Shelley, "is the bond and the sanction which connects man not only with man, but with everything which exists. Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence

1 Fascinating influence or power. 2 Spenser.

with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable (?) relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone."

Another writer speaks of humanity "touched to higher things, tearful for very goodness, turning an upward eye to the stars, and shivering to its smallest nerve with the power and the sense of beauty." "So soon," resumes Shelley, "as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he

With clearer light, in a yet higher sense, Wordsworth writes,

"By Love subsists

All lasting grandeur-by pervading Love-
That gone, we are as dust."

Nature, a precious jewel, self-luminous in the dark, having emanated from the hand of God, cannot be altogether obscured, even by sin. But when shone upon, and lit up by the light. of heaven, it again flashes and irradiates all as with the brightness of its pristine glory: or, to adopt a beautiful illustration from Cheever, "The true philosophy of nature," says he "is a religious philosophy, that is, a philosophy binding us to God. Nature rightly studied, must disclose the Creator; but the sights which we see are according to the spirit that we bring to the investigation. Standing within a

cathedral, and looking through its stained and figured
windows towards the light, we behold the forms and
colours by the light. Standing outside, and gazing at
the same windows, we see nothing but a blurred and
indistinct enamelling. Thus the soul, standing within
the great Cathedral of God's material world and looking
through it upward to the light, beholds the meaning of
its forms and colours; but standing without and study-
ing nature in detail, not with reference to the light
pouring through it from God, but for itself alone, there
is nothing better seen than the mere material enamelling.
The meaning of a transparency can be seen only by look-
ing at the light, or in the direction of the light, which
is shining through it; not by looking upon it from
without, in an external or reflected light."1
Again, Campbell writes,

"What soul hath never known
Thought, feeling, taste, harmonious to its own?
Who hath not paused while Beauty's pensive eye
Ask'd from his Heart the homage of a sigh?
Who hath not own'd, with rapture-smitten frame,
The power of Grace, the magic of a Name?"

The wish for deep human sympathy and love-like seeking like—is a principle implanted in the deepest depths of our being, and it consequently exists there, even before it has any idea of a definite object on which to lavish affection. With what extreme delicacy of touch Mary Howitt has expressed this vague longing, in her "Lady of the Palace"

"She grows tired of counting

Jewell❜d belt and ring;

Music, when none listen,

Is a weary thing!"

1"Voices of Nature." Part 1., p. 13.

Shakspere makes Valentine exclaim

"She is mine own

And I as rich in having such a jewel

As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
Their water nectar, and the rocks pure gold."

He has also said

"All orators are dumb when Beauty pleadeth."

How beautiful is his ninety-eighth Sonnet, to whomsoever addressed

"From you have I been absent in the Spring,

When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you; you pattern of all those.

Yet seem'd it winter still; and, you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play."

Still following the same thought in the ninety-ninth, sonnet he adds

"More flowers I noted; yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee."

Shakspere elsewhere shrewdly observes, that "base men being in love have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them." While such is its influence even on the ignoble, we find Michael Angelo thus expressing himself in regard to its power in hearts that are good and true