deed, and that
is now the flower and head of all living nature.

We are the photometers, we the irritable goldleaf and tinfoil that
measure the accumulations of the subtle element. We know the authentic
effects of the true fire through every one of its million disguises.

*****

LOVE.

"I was as a gem concealed;
Me my burning ray revealed."
Koran.

V. LOVE.

Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfilments; each of its joys
ripens into a new want. Nature, uncontainable, flowing, forelooking, in
the first sentiment of kindness anticipates already a benevolence which
shall lose all particular regards in its general light. The introduction
to this felicity is in a private and tender relation of one to one,
which is the enchantment of human life; which, like a certain divine
rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one period and works a revolution
in his mind and body; unites him to his race, pledges him to the
domestic and civic relations, carries him with new sympathy into nature,
enhances the power of the senses, opens the imagination, adds to his
character heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage, and gives
permanence to human society.

The natural association of the sentiment of love with the heyday of the
blood seems to require that in order to portray it in vivid tints,
which every youth and maid should confess to be true to their throbbing
experience, one must not be too old. The delicious fancies of youth
reject the least savor of a mature philosophy, as chilling with age and
pedantry their purple bloom. And therefore I know I incur the imputation
of unnecessary hardness and stoicism from those who compose the Court
and Parliament of Love. But from these formidable censors I shall appeal
to my seniors. For it is to be considered that this passion of which
we speak, though it begin with the young, yet forsakes not the old, or
rather suffers no one who is truly its servant to grow old, but makes
the aged participators of it not less than the tender maiden, though in
a different and nobler sort. For it is a fire that kindling its first
embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a wandering
spark out of another private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms
and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of
all, and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its generous
flames. It matters not therefo