air they can breathe in,--and the light of his eye the only sun of their creation, in whose rays they bask and live.”--“Then I love,” said Isidora internally. “To love,” pursued Melmoth, “is to live in an existence of perpetual contradictions--to feel that absence is insupportable, and yet be doomed to experience the presence of the object as almost equally so--to be full of ten thousand thoughts while he is absent, the confession of which we dream will render our next meeting delicious, yet when the hour of meeting arrives, to feel ourselves, by a timidity alike oppressive and unaccountable, robbed of the power of expressing one--to be eloquent in his absence, and dumb in his presence--to watch for the hour of his return as for the dawn of a new existence, yet when it arrives, to feel all those powers suspended which we imagined it would restore to energy--_to be the statue that meets the sun, but without the music his presence should draw from it_--to watch for the light of his looks, as a traveller in the deserts looks for the rising of the sun; and when it bursts on our awakened world, to sink fainting under its overwhelming and intolerable glory, and almost wish it were night again--this is love!”--“Then I believe I love,” said Isidora half audibly. “To feel,” added Melmoth with increasing energy, “that our existence is so absorbed in his, that we have lost all consciousness but of his presence--all sympathy but of his enjoyments--all sense of suffering but when he suffers--_to be_ only because _he is_--and to have no other use of being but to devote it to him, while our humiliation increases in proportion to our devotedness; and the lower you bow before your idol, the prostrations seem less and less worthy of being the expression of your devotion,--till you are only _his_, when you are not yourself--To feel that to the sacrifice of yourself, all other sacrifices are inferior; and in it, therefore, all other sacrifices must be included. That she who loves, must remember no longer her individual existence, her natural existence--that she must consider parents, country, nature, society, religion itself--(you tremble, Immalee--Isidora I would say)--only as grains of incense flung on the altar of the heart, to burn and exhale their sacrificed odours there.”--“Then I do love,” said Isidora; and she wept and trembled indeed at this terrible confession--“for I have forgot the ties they told me were natural,--the country of which they said I was a native. I will renounce, if it must be so, parents,--country,--the habits which I have acquired,--the thoughts which I have learnt,--the religion which I----Oh no! my God! my Saviour!” she exclaimed, darting from the casement, and clinging to the crucifix--“No! I will never renounce you!--I will never renounce you!--you will not forsake me in the hour of death!--you will not desert me in the moment of trial!--you will not forsake me at this moment!”