t generally ends daggers,
pistols, or poison. But there, I think, Lindore would be more eloquent
than me, so I shall leave it for him to discuss that chapter with you.
But, to return to your own immediate concerns. Pray, are you then
positively prohibited from falling in love? Did Mrs. Douglas only dress
up a scarecrow to frighten you, or had she the candour to show you Love
himself in all his majesty?"

"She told me," said Mary, "that there was a love which even the wisest
and most virtuous need not blush to entertain--the love of a virtuous
object, founded upon esteem, and heightened by similarity of tastes and
sympathy of feelings, into a pure and devoted attachment: unless I feel
all this, I shall never fancy myself in love."

"Humph! I can't say much as to the similarity of tastes and sympathy
of souls between the Duke and you, but surely you might contrive to feel
some love and esteem for a coronet and ninety thousand a year."
"Suppose I did," said Mary, with a smile, "the next point
is to honour; and surely he is as unlikely to excite that sentiment as
the other. Honour---"

"I can't have a second sermon upon honour. 'Can honour take away the
grief of a wound?' as Falstaff says. Love is the only subject I care to
preach about; though, unlike many young ladies, we can talk about other
things too; but as to this Duke, _I_ certainly 'had rather live on
cheese and garlic, in a windmill far, than feed on cakes, and have him
talk to me in any summer-house in Christendom;' and now I have had Mrs.
Douglas's second-hand sentiments upon the subject, I should like to hear
your own."

"I have never thought much upon the subject," said Mary; "my sentiments
are therefore all at second-hand, but I shall repeat to you what I think
is not love, and what is." And she repeated these pretty and well-known
lines:--

CARELESS AND FAITHFUL LOVE.

To sigh--yet feel no pain;
To weep-yet scarce know why;
To sport an hour with beauty's chain,
Then throw it idly by;
To kneel at many a shrine,
Yet lay the heart on none;
To think all other charms divine
But those we just have won:--
This is love-careless love--
Such as kindleth hearts that rove.
To keep one sacred flame
Through life, unchill'd, unmov'd;
To love in wint'ry age the same
That first in youth we loved;
To feel that we adore
With such refined excess,
That though the heart would break with mor