more, he saw before him a pale statue, that gave him one look of utter despair, and fell (for he had no power to help her) heavily at his feet. Those eyes never truly reflected the pure soul again, or answered by answering looks the fond inquiries of her poor old father. She lived to be as I saw her,--sweet, and gentle, and delicate always, but reason returned no more. She visited, ’till the day of her death, the spot where she first saw that young soldier, and dressed herself in the very clothes he said so well became her.” THE WOMAN IN WHITE. “In walking through a street in London, I saw a crowd of men women and children hooting and laughing at a woman, who, looking neither to the right-hand nor to the left, passed through the midst of them in perfect silence; upon approaching her, I saw that all this derision was caused by her dress, which, equally unsuited to the weather and her apparent rank in life, was from head to foot entirely _white_,--her bonnet, her shawl, her very shoes were _white_; and though all that she wore seemed of the coarsest materials, her dress was perfectly clean. As I walked past her, I looked stedfastly in her face. She was thin and pale, of a pleasing countenance, and totally unmoved by the clamour around her. I have since learnt her story:--The young man to whom she was betrothed died on the bridal-day, when she and her companions were dressed to go to church: she lost her senses,--and has ever since, to use her own words, been ‘expecting her bridegroom.’ Neither insult or privation of any kind can induce her to change the colour of her dress; she is alike insensible of her bereavement by death, or of the lapse of time,--‘she is dressed for the bridal, and the bridegroom is at hand.’” Such is the nature of Woman’s Love--continuing in imagination, when reality is no more: “As once I knew a crazy Moorish maid, Who dressed her in her buried lover’s clothes, And o’er the smooth spring in the mountain’s cleft Hung with her lute, and played the selfsame tune He used to play, and listened to the shadow Herself had made.”--COLERIDGE. Such is the tenderness, such the intensity of the love of innocence. It has for ever existed, and will for ever exist,--from Eve, on the first day of her creation, to the many whose hearts at this moment beat with affection and love: “All thoughts, all passions, all desires, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.” WIFE. Let us now consider affection where it appears in one of its sweetest forms,--in the love of a wife,--love, in the strength of which, hoping all things, she does not hesitate to quit her father and her mother and all dear to her to share the joys and sorrows of her husband. In prosperity she delights in his happiness, in sickness she watches over him, feeling more grief than she shows. A young soldier, thus speaks of the affection of his wife:--