“Shall I not love her,” he exclaims, “for herself alone, in spite of fickleness and folly? to love her for her regard for me, is not to love her but myself. She has robbed me of herself, shall she also rob me of my love of her? did I not live on her smile? is it less sweet because it is withdrawn from me? Did I not adore her every grace? and does she bend less enchantingly because she has turned from me to another? Is my love then in the power of fortune or of her caprice? No, I will have it lasting as it is pure; and I will make a goddess of her, and build a temple to her in my heart, and worship her on indestructible altars, and raise statues to her, and my homage shall be unblemished as her unrivalled symmetry of form. And when that fails, the memory of it shall survive, and my bosom shall be proof to scorn as hers has been to pity; and I will pursue her with an unrelenting love, and sue to be her slave and tend her steps without notice, and without reward; and serve her living, and mourn for her when dead; and thus my love will have shown itself superior to her hate, and I shall triumph and then die. This is my idea of the only true and heroic love, and such is mine for her.” Hazlitt, when he wrote all this, seemed to himself full of high and calm resolve. The hand did not fail, the pen did not stagger over the paper in a formless scrawl, yet the brain was reeling like a tower in an earthquake. “Passion,” as it has been well said, “when in a state of solemn and omnipotent vehemence, always appears to be calmness to him whom it domineers;” not unfrequently to others also, as the tide at its highest flood looks tranquil, and “neither way inclines.” [Illustration] THE NIGHTINGALE. 94. Reading the Life and Letters of Francis Horner, in the midst of a correspondence about Statistics and Bullion, and Political Economy, and the Balance of Parties, I came upon the following exquisite passage in a letter to his friend Mrs. Spencer:—