instance.

The soft cherishable Parsee is hardly at any season other than
prostrate. She craves nothing save that you continue in being--her
sun: which is your firm constitutional endeavour: and thus you have a
most exact alliance; she supplying spirit to your matter, while at the
same time presenting matter to your spirit, verily a comfortable
apposition. The Gods do bless it.

That they do so indeed is evident in the men they select for such a
felicitous crown and aureole. Weak men would be rendered nervous by the
flattery of a woman's worship; or they would be for returning it, at
least partially, as though it could be bandied to and fro without
emulgence of the poetry; or they would be pitiful, and quite spoil the
thing. Some would be for transforming the beautiful solitary vestal
flame by the first effort of the multiplication-table into your
hearth-fire of slippered affection. So these men are not they whom the
Gods have ever selected, but rather men of a pattern with themselves,
very high and very solid men, who maintain the crown by holding
divinely independent of the great emotion they have sown.

Even for them a pass of danger is ahead, as we shall see in our sample
of one among the highest of them.

A clear approach to felicity had long been the portion of Sir
Willoughby Patterne in his relations with Laetitia Dale. She belonged
to him; he was quite unshackled by her. She was everything that is good
in a parasite, nothing that is bad. His dedicated critic she was,
reviewing him with a favour equal to perfect efficiency in her office;
and whatever the world might say of him, to her the happy gentleman
could constantly turn for his refreshing balsamic bath. She flew to the
soul in him, pleasingly arousing sensations of that inhabitant; and he
allowed her the right to fly, in the manner of kings, as we have heard,
consenting to the privileges acted on by cats. These may not address
their Majesties, but they may stare; nor will it be contested that the
attentive circular eyes of the humble domestic creatures are an
embellishment to Royal pomp and grandeur, such truly as should one day
gain for them an inweaving and figurement--in the place of bees, ermine
tufts, and their various present decorations--upon the august great
robes back-flowing and foaming over the gaspy page-boys.

Further to quote from the same volume of The Book: There is pain in the
surrendering of that we are fain to relinquish.

The ide