"This, my young friend," answered the admirable Otway, "is true to nature. In those horrible and overwhelming moments of recent disseverment, when the grave has just closed upon all that lived in our fondest affections,--when the affrighted spirit glances round upon the desert wilderness, and the tremendous solitude is only interrupted by images of despair,--then, _names_ arrest not the attention. The throbbing heart is wrapped in present anguish, and the dull ear is dead to sounds; even the shade of the beloved might float upon the mourner's vision, and not surprise; but when the first agony of bereavement has settled into the waking consciousness of our loss, when the astonishment of death has subsided, when the phantoms of an amazed and distempered imagination no longer haunt the brain and people our dreams, then it is that the lonely heart sits in silent abandonment, and even 'the willow that waves in the wind,' terrifies like a ghost of other times; associations rise, names startle, and in proportion as distance from the event diminishes the natural _right_ to sympathy which great misfortunes claim in the first moments of their visitation, the delicate mind shrinks within itself fearful of repulse, and would hide its feelings even from the eye of day, lest it might seem to solicit a participation in those thoughts, which are too sacred to be shared. Caroline Douglas is not to be judged of by common-place criteria. When she and the partner of her affections took up their abode at Glenalta, they presented a picture of human felicity of which while 'memory holds her seat,' I shall never lose the most lively impression. Young, and united by the most perfect attachment, grounded upon an intimate and mutual acquaintance with disposition, character, sentiments, and opinions, the highest eulogium which it was possible to pass on either, might be comprised in one short sentence; they were formed for each other. Never did I behold two people knit together in bonds of love so tender, and friendship so rational. Every thought appeared to be held in common; and when they were conversing, it seemed as if the lips of one only gave utterance to that which in the same instant had started into life within the breast of the other. So perfect was the harmony of their souls, that every idea which arose in either mind, was caught by the other at a glance, improved and beautified ere it was reflected back again. In short, it was impossible that any one whose lot was not already cast, should enjoy the privilege of their intimacy, without becoming enamoured of a state capable of producing such celestial happiness as they were permitted to taste; while in proportion as the mind was disposed to offer a tribute of _abstract_ homage at the altar of hymen, the dread of risking individual experiment would as naturally arise, lest mistaking an exception for the rule, disappointment should ensue as the fruit of imitation. But there