es, with great trains of artillery,--but not a single
scout. It is as calm and pure as polar snows; but deep underneath, where
no footsteps have gone, and where no eye can reach but one, lies the
warm and the throbbing earth.

Make what you will of the slight, quivering blushes, and of the half
broken expressions,--more you cannot get. The love that a
delicate-minded girl will tell is a short-sighted and outside love; but
the love that she cherishes without voice or token is a love that will
mould her secret sympathies, and her deepest, fondest yearnings, either
to a quiet world of joy, or to a world of placid sufferance. The true
voice of her love she will keep back long and late, fearful ever of her
most prized jewel,--fearful to strange sensitiveness; she will show
kindness, but the opening of the real floodgates of the heart, and the
utterance of those impassioned yearnings which belong to its nature,
come far later. And fearful, thrice fearful is the shock, if these flow
out unmet!

That deep, thrilling voice, bearing all the perfume of the womanly soul
in its flow, rarely finds utterance; and if uttered vainly,--if called
out by tempting devices, and by a trust that is abused,--desolate indeed
is the maiden heart, widowed of its chastest thought! The soul shrinks
affrighted within itself. Like a tired bird lost at sea, fluttering
around what seem friendly boughs, it stoops at length, and finding only
cold, slippery spars, with no bloom and no foliage,--its last hope
gone,--it sinks to a wild ocean grave!

Nelly--and the thought brings a tear of sympathy to your eye--must have
such a heart; it speaks in every shadow of her action. And this very
delicacy seems to lend her a charm that would make her a wife to be
loved and honored.

Ay, there is something in that maidenly modesty--retiring from you as
you advance, retreating timidly from all bold approaches, fearful and
yet joyous--which wins upon the iron hardness of a man's nature like a
rising flame. To force of action and resolve he opposes force; to strong
will he mates his own; pride lights pride; but to the gentleness of the
true womanly character he yields with a gush of tenderness that nothing
else can call out. He will never be subjugated on his own ground of
action and energy; but let him be lured to that border country over
which the delicacy and fondness of a womanly nature presides, and his
energy yields, his haughty determination faints, he is prou