as planted in it by the same
hand that created it;" and of Lady Elizabeth Hastings he wrote that
"to love her was a liberal education." In Steel's _Lover_ (No. 5) we
read:

"During this emotion I am highly elated in my Being, and my
every sentiment improved by the effects of that Passion....
I am more and more convinced that this Passion is in lowest
minds the strongest Incentive that can move the Soul of Man
to laudable Accomplishments."

And in No. 29: "Nothing can _mend the Heart_ better than an honorable
Love, except Religion." Thomas Otway sang:

O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee
To temper man: we had been brutes without you.
There's in you all that we believe of heaven,
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love.

"Love taught him shame," said Dryden, and Spenser wrote a Hymn in
Honor of Love, in which he declared that

Such is the power of that sweet passion
That it _all sordid baseness doth expel_,
And the refined mind doth newly fashion
Unto a fairer form, which now doth dwell
In his high thought, that would itself excel.

Leigh Hunt wrote: "My love has made me better and more desirous of
improvement than I have been."

Love, indeed, is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire,
With angels shared, by Allah given,
To _lift from earth our low desire_.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But heaven itself descends in love.
--_Byron_.

Why should we kill the _best of passions_, love?
It aids the hero, bids ambition rise
To nobler heights, inspires immortal deeds,
Ev'n _softens brutes_, and adds a grace to virtue.
--_Thomson_.

Dr. Beddoe, author of the _Browning Cyclopaedia_, declares that "the
passion of love, throughout Mr. Browning's works, is treated as the
most _sacred_ thing in the human soul." How Browning himself loved we
know from one of his wife's letters, in which she relates how she
tried to discourage his advances:

"I showed him how he was throwing away into the ashes
his best affections--how the common gifts of youth and
cheerfulness were behind me--how I had not strength,
even of heart, for the ordinary duties of
life--everything I told him and showed him. 'Look at
this--and this--and this,'