"Passion!"-can you not read the tale I'm Passion's PRIEST and SACRIFICE TO LITTLE HARRIET, OF MOSESTOWN. Little beautiful being! how glorious thou art! Would settle for ever in dwellings so bright- Oh! still, as you pass through this valley of tears, FIRST LOVE A FRAGMENT. Love! heavy lightness! serious vanity! * I had always-I do not know whether on the authority of some commentator or from my own opinion-accustomed myself to consider this passage in our great dramatist, merely as a heaped assemblage of quaint antitheses collected together to startle and enliven by their opposition. A little observation of my own feelings-and our own feelings are the best criterion as to the natural in passionhas made me look on it quite differently. I do not know that I ever found love-with all its incredible inconsistencies—its varying emotions, and conflicting sensations, so strongly and concisely described before. I have not myself, from the age of sixteen, been visited by this spirit; and, since that time, had accustomed myself to consider his influence as a mere toy of youth—his empire as an Utopian kingdom, and himself but as a vision with which boyish fancy loved to cheat its hours of idleness. That he was of the shadowy race of fairies and genii, whose dwelling is by the vale, and the forest, and the mountain, and whose town residence (when they come in to winter) is the servant's-hall and nursery fire-side. An event of recent occurrence has sadly convinced me that love is—that my heart, though unknown to me, was his sanctuary, and that I still carried about with me the toys of infancy, though circumstances counteracted my infant propensity to indulge in them. How fondly the heart rushes back into former feelings, and revels in the remembrance of vanished delights! How ardently do we hasten to acknowledge that "such things were, and were most dear to us," when memory, touching the chain of cherished associations, bids it vibrate to its furthest link. Take all that Hope holds out of bright or alluring-all that anticipation presents in her most Circean cupall that ambition aims at, or possession ensures— compare them with the treasures young Memory has hoarded in her inmost cell, and, though tricked in all the colours of near or actual enjoyment, they shrink before the simple yet cherished pictures of the past, as the fresh but soul-less productions of modern artists, from the touching though faded strokes of a Reubens or a Titian, About a fortnight since, the wheather being very stormy, I had drawn my chair and table close to the fire, collected as many books as I thought would give variety to the evening, and made all necessary preparation for an intellectual lounge, when I heard one of my sisters whisper the other-"She is dead." "Who?" I inquired-" Ellen- How can I describe my feeling ?-It was annihilation and sensation combined. This may seem a strange expression but I felt it-I feel it now-yet can no otherwise describe it than by imagining void with a spirit in it-an infelt sense of sensation with nothing to perceive but your own capability of perception-an endless, boundless, starless night with being in the centre of it. That is annihilation, or there is no such thing-a sense of dark, dreary, and interminable existence. To be nothing is to be without loving or being loved. I loved Ellen-I said it when a boy-I must have thought it when a man-I feel it now! It could not have faded from my bosom, and returned again with such force and freshness, for a word or an event.-It was written in secret on my heart, like letters that come out before the fire; but what heated my heart cooled hers— death. I cannot be persuaded that love for an object is not born with us-coeval with the first germ of our existence, even though that object may not yet have come into being:-mine was such * * * I had not heard Ellen's name for three years, I had no memory of having thought of her, and yet I must have thought of her. Her image was in my heart, veiled-death withdrew the curtain. Oh! how quickly did the visions of youth and youthful extacy spring up to memory! I saw her as I had first seen her with my sister. It was a holyday—we had leave of absence from school, my sister and her friends were emancipated also. We were children, we were 1 imitators, and should be in love like our elders. I was to be accompanied by the boys, my sister by the girls, and our relationship formed the link which was to bring us all into contact. I had been on such adventures before, and my companions expected that my experience should begin the conversation, and give them confidence to pursue it. I intended -I promised to have done so-Alas, I was not aware of the new feeling that was about to put all my experience to flight. In my former transactions of this sort I was indifferent-more than indifferent. I would rather be at my top or marbles, but vanity would have me a gallant, though the character was irksome to me. I was eager to be the favorite of the fair, merely because it gave me weight in the eyes of my companions; and I played the character well, for I was not too anxious about the success. But when I came this day to my sister, accompanied by my friends, to whom my bearing was to be an example -when I saw Ellen-The girls had been throwing snow-balls in sport, the delicate rose on her cheek was heightened by the exercise, her rich lips were apart, and she breathed odour through them, her teeth shewed like drops of hail just fallen in the rose's cup, and her bright blue eyes laughed out through the dishevelled ringlets of her golden hair, like specks of deep azure from the fleecy cloud which the sun has just illumined. As she discharged, from a hand fairer than the missile it flung, a ball loose of snow into the kerchief of one of her young com |