anition--the sooner that its object
is out of the way, and absence in time will conquer it.

The third is the love that "dotes yet doubts," that doubts but never
dies--no never. The jealousy that pains, only sustains it; it lives on,
now happy in the honeyed conviction of triumph, now smarting under real
or fancied scorn--on, on, so long as its object is accessible to sight
or hearing! No matter how worthless that object may be or become--no
matter how lost or fallen! Love regards not this; it has nought to do
with the moral part of our nature. Beauty is the shrine of its worship,
and beauty is not morality.

In my own mind I am conscious of three elements or classes of feeling:
the _moral_, the _intellectual_, and what I may term the _passional_--
the last as distinct from either of the other two as oil from spirits or
water. To the last belongs love, which, I repeat again, has no sympathy
with the moral feelings of our nature, but, alas! as one might almost
believe, with their opposite. Even a plain but wicked coquette will
captivate more hearts than a beautiful saint, and the brilliant
murderess ere now has made conquests at the very foot of the scaffold!

It pains me to pronounce these convictions, derived as they are from
experience. There is as little gain as pleasure in so doing, but
popularity must be sacrificed at the shrine of truth. For the sake of
effect, I shall not play false with philosophy.

Rough ranger as I was, I had studied psychology sufficiently to
understand these truths; and I endeavoured to analyse my passion for
this girl or woman--to discover _why_ I loved her. Her physical beauty
was of the highest order, and that no doubt was an element; but it was
not all. Had I merely looked upon this beauty under ordinary
circumstances--that is, without coming in contact with the spirit that
animated it--I might have loved her, or I might not. It was the spirit,
then, that had won me, though not alone. The same gem in a less
brilliant setting might have failed to draw my admiration. I was the
captive both of the spirit and the form. Soul and body had co-operated
in producing my passion, and this may account for its suddenness and
profundity. Why I loved her person, I knew--I was not ignorant of the
laws of beauty--but why the spirit, I knew not. Certainly not from any
idea I had formed of her high _moral_ qualities; I had no evidence of
these. Of her courage, even to daring, I had proo