even molecular motion:
a thing impossible to produce, and which to produce would require
incalculable pressure and almost incalculable cold.

(Is there no chemical formula for fixing the impression of the heart?)

Who really held Burns his heart in thrall, Nelly Fitzpatrick or Mary
Campbell or Ellison Begbie or Margaret Chalmers or Charlotte Hamilton or
Jenny Cruikshank or Anne Park or Jean Armour or Mrs. Whelpdale or Mrs.
Agnes McLehose? and who the heart of Goethe,--Gretchen or Kitty Shonkopf
or Frederica Brion or Charlotte Buff or Lily Shonemann or the Countess
Augusta or Charlotte van Stein or Bettina Brentano or Mariana von
Willemer--or his wife, Christina Vulpius?

However, whether it is a provision of Nature, or whether it is due to the
perversity of Man, probably the feminine heart is far more constant than
the masculine, and perhaps any one of Goethe's or of Burns his inamoratas
would have clung to him had he been faithful to her. And yet,

Would you have had Shelley stick to Harriet Westbrooke? and how shall one
interpret his feelings for Amelia Viviani? What would have happened if
Keats had lived and married Fanny Brawne--she who flirted with somebody
else while he was sick and did not even know that he was a poet? Yet she
was an inspiration to Keats, as Mary Godwin (and Amelia Viviani) were to
Shelley (1). Ought Byron to have said 'No' to Claire or Lady Caroline
Lamb or the Countess Guiccioli or any one of the many maids and matrons
that besieged his heart? Could anything have kept Rosina Wheeler and
Bulwer Lytton side by side,--Rosina Wheeler to whom, before marriage,
Lytton could find write, "Oh, my dear Rose! Where shall I find words to
express my love for you?" and to whom, after marriage, he wrote, "Madam,
The more I consider your conduct and your letter, the more unwarrantable
they appear"?

God in heaven! what a pitiful game it all is! And alas! as George Sand
says, "All this, you see, is a game that we are playing, but our heart
and life are the stakes, and that has an aspect which is not always
pleasing." (2)

(1) See the Dedication of "The Revolt of Islam" (and see the
"Epipsychidion").

(2) Letter to Alfred de Musset.

* * *

Many a man's heart has been treated as a football. Yes; but many a
woman's heart has been treated as a shuttlecock.

* * *

Human beings there are--both men and women--out of whom, at a mere
touch, virtue seems to go: converse with them is stimulating; contac