he kindest praise upon them. Among these gentlemen I will
mention A. Stahr, C. V. Holtei, M. Hartmann, E. Hoefer, W. Wolfsohn, C.
Leemans, Professor Veth of Amsterdam, etc. Yet I will not conceal the
fact that some, whose opinion has great weight, have asked: "Did the
ancients know anything of love, in our sense of the word? Is not romantic
love, as we know it, a result of Christianity?" The following sentence,
which stands at the head of the preface to my first edition, will prove
that I had not ignored this question when I began my task.

"It has often been remarked that in Cicero's letters and those of
Pliny the younger there are unmistakable indications of sympathy
with the more sentimental feeling of modern days. I find in them
tones of deep tenderness only, such as have arisen and will arise
from sad and aching hearts in every land and every age."

A. v. HUMBOLDT. Cosmos II. P. 19.

This opinion of our great scholar is one with which I cheerfully coincide
and would refer my readers to the fact that love-stories were written
before the Christian era: the Amor and Psyche of Apuleius for instance.
Indeed love in all its forms was familiar to the ancients. Where can we
find a more beautiful expression of ardent passion than glows in Sappho's
songs? or of patient faithful constancy than in Homer's Penelope? Could
there be a more beautiful picture of the union of two loving hearts, even
beyond the grave, than Xenophon has preserved for us in his account of
Panthea and Abradatas? or the story of Sabinus the Gaul and his wife,
told in the history of Vespasian? Is there anywhere a sweeter legend than
that of the Halcyons, the ice-birds, who love one another so tenderly
that when the male becomes enfeebled by age, his mate carries him on her
outspread wings whithersoever he will; and the gods, desiring to reward
such faithful love, cause the sun to shine more kindly, and still the
winds and waves on the "Halcyon days" during which these birds are
building their nest and brooding over their young? There can surely have
been no lack of romantic love in days when a used-up man of the world,
like Antony, could desire in his will that wherever he died his body
might be laid by the side of his beloved Cleopatra: nor of the chivalry
of love when Berenice's beautiful hair was placed as a constellation in
the heavens. Neither can we believe that devotion in the cause of love
could be wanting when a who