My love Is as the very centre of the earth Drawing all things to it. --_Troilus and Cressida._ There is perhaps no emotion more elevating or more deceptive than that sudden uplifting of the heart and yearning of the senses which may be called “imaginary” Love. It resembles the stirring of the sap in the roots of flowers, thrilling the very ground with hints and promises of spring,--it is the unspeakable outcoming of human emotion and sympathy too great to be contained within itself,--the tremulous desire,--half vague and wholly innocent,--of the human soul for its mate. The lower grades of passion have not as yet ruffled the quivering white wings of this divinely sweet emotion, and the being who is happy enough to experience it in all its intensity, is, for the time, the most enviable on earth. Youth or maiden, whichever it be, the world is a fairyland for this chosen dreamer. Nothing appears base or mean,--God’s smile is reflected in every ray of sunshine, and Nature offers no prospect that is not pleasing. It is the season of glamour and grammarye,--a look over the distant hills is sufficient to engage the mind of the dreaming girl with brilliant fancies of gallant knights riding from far-off countries, with their lady’s colours pinned to their breasts “to do or die” for the sake of love and glory,--and the young boy, half in love with a pretty face he has seen on his way home from school or college, begins to think with all the poets, of eyes blue as skies, of loves and doves, and hearts and darts, in happy unconsciousness that his thoughts are not in the least original. Yet with all its ethereal beauty and gossamer-sense of pleasure, this “imaginary” love is often the most pathetic experience we have or ever shall have in life. It is answerable for numberless griefs,--for bitter disillusions,--occasionally, too, for broken hearts. It glitters before us, a brilliant chimera, during our very young days,--and on our entrance into society it vanishes, leaving us to pursue it through many phases of existence, and always in vain. The poet is perhaps the happiest of all who join in this persistent chase after the impossible,--for he frequently continues to imagine “imaginary” love with ecstasy and fervour to the very end of his days. Next in order comes the musician, who in the composition of a melancholy nocturne or tender ballad, or in the still greater work of a romantic opera, imagines “imaginary” love in strains of perfect sound, which waken in the hearts of his hearers all the old feverish longings, all the dear youthful dreams, all the delicious romances which accompanied the lovely white-winged Sentiment in days past and dead for ever. Strange to say, it often happens that the musician, while thus appeasing his own insatiable thirst for “imaginary” love, is frequently aware that he is arousing it in others; and could he probe to the very fibres of