lood can possibly encounter. My
day-dream lady--a person that may be termed with equal propriety the
"bachelor's wife,"--has not been so distinctly recognised; but she
occupies a large place in our literature, as the mistress of all the
poets who ever wrote on love without actually experiencing it, from the
days of Cowley down to those of Henry Kirke White; and her presence
serves always to intimate a heart capable of occupation, but still
unoccupied. I find the bachelor's wife delicately drawn in one the
posthumous poems of poor Alexander Bethune, as a "fair being"--the
frequent subject of his day-dreams--

"Whose soft voice
Should be the sweetest music to his ear,
Awakening all the chords of harmony;
Whose eye should speak a language to his soul,
More eloquent than aught which Greece or Rome
Could boast of in its best and happiest days;
Whose smile should be his rich reward for toil;
Whose pure transparent cheek, when press'd to his,
Should calm the fever of his troubled thoughts,
And woo his spirit to those fields Elysian--
The paradise which strong affection guards."

It may be always predicated of these bachelors' wives, that they never
closely resemble in their lineaments any living woman: poor Bethune's
would not have exhibited a single feature of any of his fair neighbours,
the lasses of Upper Rankeillour or Newburgh. Were the case otherwise,
the dream maiden would be greatly in danger of being displaced by the
real one whom she resembled; and it was a most significant event, which,
notwithstanding my inexperience, I learned by and bye to understand,
that about this time my old companion, the "bachelor's wife," utterly
forsook me, and that a vision of my young friend took her place. I can
honestly aver, that I entertained not a single hope that the feeling
should be mutual. On whatever other head my vanity may have flattered
me, it certainly never did so on the score of personal appearance. My
personal strength was, I knew, considerably above the average of that of
my fellows, and at this time my activity also; but I was perfectly
conscious that, on the other hand, my good looks rather fell below than
rose above the medial line. And so, while I suspected, as I well might,
that, as in the famous fairy story, "Beauty" had made a conquest of the
"Beast," I had not the most distant expectation that the "Beast" would,
in turn, make a conquest of "Beauty.