vy whomsoever
dies." To console himself, he read Boethius, and religious philosophy
was ever afterwards his favorite study. Nor did serenity come, so deep
were his sentiments, so powerful was his imagination, until he had
formed an exalted purpose to write a poem in her honor, and worthy of
his love. "If it please Him through whom all things come," said Dante,
"that my life be spared, I hope to tell such things of her as never
before have been seen by any one."

Now what inspired so strange a purpose? Was it a Platonic sentiment,
like the love of Petrarch for Laura, or something that we cannot
explain, and yet real,--a mystery of the soul in its deepest cravings
and aspirations? And is love, among mortals generally, based on such a
foundation? Is it flesh and blood we love; is it the intellect; is it
the character; is it the soul; is it what is inherently interesting in
woman, and which everybody can see,--the real virtues of the heart and
charms of physical beauty? Or is it what we fancy in the object of our
adoration, what exists already in our own minds,--the archetypes of
eternal ideas of beauty and grace? And do all men worship these forms of
beauty which the imagination creates? Can any woman, or any man, seen
exactly as they are, incite a love which is kindred to worship? And is
any love worthy to be called love, if it does not inspire emotions which
prompt to self-sacrifice, labor, and lofty ends? Can a woman's smiles
incite to Herculean energies, and drive the willing worshipper to Aoenian
heights, unless under these smiles are seen the light of life and the
blessedness of supernatural fervor? Is there, and can there be, a
perpetuity in mortal charms without the recognition or the supposition
of a moral beauty connected with them, which alone is pure and
imperishable, and which alone creates the sacred ecstasy that revels in
the enjoyment of what is divine, or what is supposed to be divine, not
in man, but in the conceptions of man,--the ever-blazing glories of
goodness or of truth which the excited soul doth see in the eyes and
expression of the adored image? It is these archetypes of divinity, real
or fancied, which give to love all that is enduring. Destroy these, take
away the real or fancied glories of the soul and mind, and the holy
flame soon burns out. No mortal love can last, no mortal love is
beautiful, unless the visions which the mind creates are not more or
less realized in the object of it, or whe