Youthful passion is a giant. It overleaps all the dreams, and all the resolves of our better and quieter nature; and drives madly toward some wild issue, that lives only in its frenzy. How little account does passion take of goodness! It is not within the cycle of its revolution: it is below; it is tamer; it is older; it wears no wings. And your proud heart flashing back to the memory of that sparkling eye which lighted your hope--full-fed upon the vanities of cloister learning, drives your soberer visions to the wind. As you recall those tones, so full of brilliancy and pride, the quiet virtues fade, like the soft haze upon a spring landscape driven westward by a swift, sea-born storm. The pulse bounds; the eyes flash; the heart trembles with its sharp springs. Hope dilates, like the eye, fed with swift blood leaping to the brain. Again the image of Miss Dalton, so fine, so noble, so womanly, fills and bounds the Future. The lingering tears of grief drop away from your eye, as the lingering loves of boyhood drop from your scalding passion, or drip into clouds of vapor. You listen to the calm, thoughtful advice of the father, with a deep consciousness of something stronger than his counsels seething in your bosom. The words of caution, of instruction, of guidance, fall upon your heated imagination like the night-dews upon the crater of an AEtna. They are beneficent and healthful for the straggling herbage upon the surface of the mountain, but they do not reach or temper the inner fires that are rolling their billows of flame beneath! You drop hints from time to time, to those with whom you are most familiar, of some prospective change of condition. There is a new and cheerful interest in the building-plans of your neighbors,--a new and cheerful study of the principles of domestic architecture,--in which very elegant boudoirs, adorned with harps, hold prominent place; and libraries with gilt-bound books, very rich in lyrical and dramatic poetry; fine views from bay-windows; graceful pots of flowers; sleek-looking Italian greyhounds; cheerful sunlight; musical goldfinches chattering on the wall; superb pictures of princesses in peasant dresses; soft Axminster carpets; easy-acting bell-pulls; gigantic candelabrums; porcelain vases of classic shape; neat waiters in white aprons; luxurious lounges; and, to crown them all with the very height of your pride,--the elegant Laura, the mistress, and the guardian of your soul, moving amid the scene like a new Duchess of Valliere!