n a person, either man or
woman, is not capable of seeing ideal perfections. The loves of savages
are the loves of brutes. The more exalted the character and the soul,
the greater is the capacity of love, and the deeper its fervor. It is
not the object of love which creates this fervor, but the mind which is
capable of investing it with glories. There could not have been such
intensity in Dante's love had he not been gifted with the power of
creating so lofty and beautiful an ideal; and it was this he
worshipped,--not the real Beatrice, but the angelic beauty he thought he
saw in her. Why could he not see the perfections he adored shining in
other women, who perhaps had a higher claim to them? Ah, that is the
mystery! And you cannot solve it any easier than you can tell why a
flower blooms or a seed germinates. And why was it that Dante, with his
great experience, could in later life see the qualities he adored in no
other woman than in the cold and unappreciative girl who avoided him?
Suppose she had become his wife, might he not have been disenchanted,
and his veneration been succeeded by a bitter disappointment? Yet, while
the delusion lasted, no other woman could have filled her place; in no
other woman could he have seen such charms; no other love could have
inspired his soul to make such labors.

I would not be understood as declaring that married love must be
necessarily a disenchantment. I would not thus libel humanity, and
insult plain reason and experience. Many loves _are_ happy, and burn
brighter and brighter to the end; but it is because there are many who
are worthy of them, both men and women,--because the ideal, which the
mind created, _is_ realized to a greater or less degree, although the
loftier the archetype, the less seldom is it found. Nor is it necessary
that perfection should be found. A person may have faults which alienate
and disenchant, but with these there may be virtues so radiant that the
worship, though imperfect, remains,--a respect, on the whole, so great
that the soul is lifted to admiration. Who can love this perishable
form, unless one sees in it some traits which belong to superior and
immortal natures? And hence the sentiment, when pure, creates a sort of
companionship of beings robed in celestial light, and exorcises those
degrading passions which belong to earth. But Dante saw no imperfections
in Beatrice: perhaps he had no opportunity to see them. His own soul
was so filled with