nsubstantial and wavering world
of dreams, and in their place give us the very humblest humanities, so
much the better if enjoyed in some beautiful scene of nature like this,
where all is steadfast but the clouds, whose very being is change, and
the flow of waters that have been in motion since the Flood.

Ha! a splendid equipage with a coronet. And out steps, handed by her
elated husband, a high-born beautiful and graceful bride. They are
making a tour of the Lakes, and the honeymoon hath not yet filled her
horns. If there be indeed such a thing as happiness on this earth, here
it is--youth, elegance, health, rank, riches, and love--all united in
ties that death alone can sunder. How they hang towards each other--the
blissful pair! Blind in their passion to all the scenery they came to
admire, or beholding it but by fits and snatches, with eyes that can see
only one object. She hath already learnt to forget father and mother,
and sister and brother, and all the young creatures like herself--every
one--that shared the pastimes and the confidence of her virgin
youthhood. With her, as with Genevieve--

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame!"

And will this holy state of the spirit endure? No--it will fade, and
fade, and fade away, so imperceptibly, so unconsciously (so like the
shortening of the long summer-days, that lose minute after minute of the
light, till again we hear the yellow leaves rustling in autumnal
twilight), that the heart within that snow-drifted bosom will know not
how great has been the change, till at last it shall be told the truth,
and know that all mortal emotion, however paradisiacal, is born to die.

Fain would we believe that forebodings like these are, on all such
occasions, whispered by a blind and ignorant misanthropy, and that of
wedded life it may generally be said,

"O, happy state, where souls together draw,
Where love is liberty, and nature law!"

What profound powers of affection, grief, pity, sympathy, delight, and
religion belong, by its constitution, to the frame of every human soul!
And if the courses of life have not greatly thwarted the divine
dispensations of nature, will they not all rise into genial play within
bosoms consecrated to each other's happiness, till comes between them
the cold hand of death? It would seem that everything fair and good mus