With all its folly, sweetness, piteousness and pathos, “imaginary” love is the keynote of Art,--its fool-musings take shape in exquisite verse, in tales of romance and adventure, in pictures that bring the nations together to stand and marvel, in music that makes the strong man weep. It is the most supersensual of all delicate sensations,--as fine as a hair, as easily destroyed as a gnat’s wing!--a rough touch will wound it,--a coarse word will kill it,--the sneer of the Realist shuts it in a coffin of lead and sinks it fathoms deep in the waters of despair. Strange and cruel as the fact may seem, Marriage appears to put an end to it altogether. Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife He would have written sonnets to her all his life? inquires Byron. He certainly would not. The “imaginary” love of Petrarch was the source of his poetic inspiration; if he had ever dragged it down to the level of the commonplace Actual, he would have killed his Muse. In a similar way the love of Dante for Beatrice was of the “imaginary” quality. Those who read the “Vita Nuova” will scarcely fail to see how the great poet hugs his love-fancies and feeds himself with delicious extravagances in the way of idealized and sublimated soul-passion. He dissects every fine hair of a stray emotion, and writes a sonnet on every passing heart-beat. Dante’s wife never became so transfigured in her husband’s love. Why? Alas, who can say! No reason can be given save that perchance “familiarity breeds contempt,” and that the Unattainable seems always more beautiful than the Attained. The delight of possession would appear to be as brief as the flowering of a rose. Lovers are in haste to wed,--but when the knot is once irrevocably tied, in nine cases out of ten they wish it could be untied again. They no longer imagine “imaginary” love! The glamour is gone. Illusions are all over. The woman is no longer the removed, the fair, the chaste, the unreachable,--the man ceases to be the proud, the strong hero endowed with the attributes of the gods. “Imaginary” love then resolves itself into one of two things,--a firm, every-day, close and tender _friendship_, or else a sick disappointment, often ending in utter disgust. But the divine emotion of “imaginary” love has died,--the Soul is no longer enamoured of its Ideal--and the delicate psychic passion which inspires the poet, the painter, the musician, turns at once to fresh objects of admiration and pursuit. For it is never exhausted,--unlike any purely earthly sense it knows no satiety. Deceived in one direction, it dies in another. Dissatisfied with worldly things, it extends its longing heavenwards,--there at least it shall find what it seeks,--not now, but hereafter! Age does not blunt this fine emotion, for, as may often be remarked with some beautiful souls in the decline of bodily life, the resigning of earthly enjoyments gives them no pain,--and the sweet placidity of expectation,