hought,
and felt, and spoke by rule; and should deem it preferable that her
sensibility brought upon her occasional distress, than that she always
calculated the degree of her feeling.

Life has its romance, and to this it owes much of its charm. It is not
that every woman is a heroine and every individual history a novel; but
there are scenes and incidents in real life so peculiar, and so poetic,
that we need not be indebted to fiction for the development of romance.
Christians will trace such scenes and incidents immediately to
Providence, and they do so with affectionate and confiding hearts; and
the more affecting or remarkable these may be, the more clearly do they
recognize the Divine interference. They regard them as remembrances of
Heaven, to recall to them their connection with it, and remind them that
whatever there may be to interest or excite their feelings here, there
is infinitely more to affect and warm their hearts in the glorious
prospects beyond.

It is natural that women should be very susceptible to such impressions;
that they should view life with almost a poetic eye; and that they
should be peculiarly sensitive to its vicissitudes. And though a
Quixotic quest after adventures is as silly as it is vain, and to invest
every trifle with importance, or to see something marvelous in every
incident, is equally absurd; there is no reason why the imagination
should not grasp whatever is picturesque, and the mind dwell upon
whatever is impressive, and the heart warm with whatever is affecting,
in the changes and the chances of our pilgrimage. There is indeed a
great deal of what is mean and low in all that is connected with this
world; quite enough to sully the most glowing picture; but let us
sometimes view life with its golden tints; let us sometimes taste its
ambrosial dews; let us sometimes breathe its more ethereal atmosphere;
and let us do so, not as satisfied with any thing it can afford--not as
entranced by any of its illusions--but as those who catch, even in this
dull mirror, a shadowy delineation of a brighter world, and who pant
for what is pure, celestial, and eternal. This is surely better than
clipping the wings of imagination, or restraining the impulses of
feeling, or reducing all our joys and sorrows to mere matters of
calculation or of sense.

They are indeed to be pitied who are in the opposite extreme--whose
happiness or misery is entirely ideal; but we have within us such a
capacit