. For
indeed the love that looks to marriage is itself a religion: its first
impulse is to invest its object with poetry and consecration: to be
"true to the kindred points of Heaven and home," is both its
inspiration and its law. It thus involves a sort of regeneration of
the inner man, and carries in its hand the baptismal fire of a nobler
and diviner life.

And so it is in this delectable instance. In Ferdinand, as in all
generous natures, "love betters what is best." Its first springing in
his breast stirs his heavenward thoughts and aspirations into
exercise: the moment that kindles his heart towards Miranda also
kindles his soul in piety to God; and he knows not how to commune in
prayer with the Source of good, unless he may couple her welfare with
his own, and breathe her name in his holiest service. Thus his love
and piety are kindred and coefficient forces, as indeed all true love
and piety essentially are. However thoughtless we may be of the
Divine help and guardianship for ourselves, we can hardly choose but
crave them for those to whom our souls are knit in the sacred dearness
of household ties. And so with this noble pair, the same power that
binds them to each other in the sacraments of love also binds them
both in devout allegiance to the Author of their being; whose presence
is most felt by them in the sacredness of their mutual truth.

So much for the illustration here so sweetly given of the old
principle, that whatsoever lies nearest a Christian's heart,
whatsoever he tenders most dearly on Earth, whatsoever draws in most
intimately with the currents of his soul, that is the spontaneous
subject-matter of his prayers; our purest loves thus sending us to
God, as if from an instinctive feeling that unless God be sanctified
in our hearts, our hearts cannot retain their proper life.

In regard to what springs up between Ferdinand and Miranda, it is to
be noted that Prospero does little but furnish occasions. He indeed
thanks the quaint and delicate Ariel for the kindling touch that so
quickly puts them "both in either's power"; for it seems to him the
result of a finer inspiration than his art can reach; and so he
naturally attributes it to the magic of his airy minister; whereas in
truth it springs from a source far deeper than the magic of either,--a
pre-established harmony which the mutual recognition now first
quickens into audible music. After seeing himself thus outdone by the
Nature he has been