Absence and tranquillity appear so favorable to the indulgence of this pleasing passion, that lovers frequently quit the beloved object, to reflect in solitude on her charms. Who does not recollect to have read, in the Confessions of Rousseau, the story related by Madame de Luxemberg, of a lover who quitted the presence of his mistress, only that he might have the pleasure of writing to her. Rousseau replied to Madame de Luxemberg, that he wished he had been that man; and his wish was founded on a perfect knowledge of the passion: for who has ever been in love, and does not know that there are moments when the pen is capable of expressing the fine feelings of the heart with much greater effect than the voice, with its miserable organ of speech? The tongue, even in its happiest elocution, is never so persuasive as the speaking eyes, when lovers gaze with silent ecstacy on each other’s charms. Lovers not only express, but feel their passion with higher ecstacy and happiness in solitude than in any other situation. What fashionable lover ever painted his passion for a lovely mistress with such laconic tenderness and effect, as the village chorister of Hanover did on the death of a young and beautiful country girl with whom he was enamored, when, after erecting in the cemetery of the cathedral, a sepulchral stone to her memory, he carved, in an artless manner, the figure of a blooming rose on its front, and inscribed beneath it these words: _C’est ainsi qu’elle fut_. It was at the feet of those rocks which overhung the celebrated retreat at Vaucluse, that Petrarch composed his finest sonnets to deplore the absence, or to complain of the cruelty of his beloved Laura. The Italians are of opinion, that when love inspired his muse, his poetry soared far beyond that of any poet who ever wrote before or since his time, either in the Greek, the Latin, or the Tuscan languages. “Ah! how soft and tender is this language of the heart!” they exclaim. “Petrarch alone was acquainted with its power: he has added to the three graces a fourth--the grace of delicacy.” Love, however, when indulged in rural solitude or amidst the romantic scenery of an ancient castle, and, assisted by the ardent imagination of impetuous youth, frequently assumes a more bold and violent character. Religious enthusiasm, blended with a saturnine disposition, forms, in effervescent minds, a sublime and extraordinary compound of the feelings of the heart. A youthful lover of this description, when deprived of the smiles of his mistress, takes his first declaration of love from the text of the apocalypse and thinks his passion an eternal melancholy; but when he is inclined to sharpen the dart within his breast, his inspired mind views in the beloved object the fairest model of divine perfection.