Why should we kill the _best of passions_, love? It aids the hero, bids ambition rise To nobler heights, inspires immortal deeds, Ev'n _softens brutes_, and adds a grace to virtue. --_Thomson_. Dr. Beddoe, author of the _Browning Cyclopaedia_, declares that "the passion of love, throughout Mr. Browning's works, is treated as the most _sacred_ thing in the human soul." How Browning himself loved we know from one of his wife's letters, in which she relates how she tried to discourage his advances: "I showed him how he was throwing away into the ashes his best affections--how the common gifts of youth and cheerfulness were behind me--how I had not strength, even of heart, for the ordinary duties of life--everything I told him and showed him. 'Look at this--and this--and this,' throwing down all my disadvantages. To which he did not answer by a single compliment, but simply that he had not then to choose, and that I might be right or he might be right, he was not there to decide; but that he loved me and should to his last hour. He said that the freshness of youth had passed with him also, and that he had studied the world out of books and seen many women, yet had never loved one until he had seen me. That he knew himself, and knew that, if ever so repulsed, he should love me to his last hour--it should be first and last." No poet understood better than Tennyson that purity is an ingredient of love: For indeed I know Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only _to keep down the base in man_, But teach high thoughts and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame And love of truth, and all that makes a man. MAIDEN FANCIES Bryan Waller Proctor fell in love when he was only five years old: "My love," he wrote afterward, "had the fire of passion, but not the clay which drags it downward; it partook of the innocence of my years, while it etherealized me." Such ethereal love too is the prerogative of a young maiden, whose imagination is immaculate, ignorant of impurity. Her feelings have the fragrancy, The freshness of young flowers. No, no, the utmost share Of my desire shall be, Only to kiss that air That lately kissed thee.