Hark! through the sacred silence of the night Loud chanticleer doth sound his clarion shrill, Hailing with song the first pale gleam of light Which floats the dark brow of yon eastern hill. Bright star of morn, oh! leave not yet the wave To deck the dewy frontlet of the day; Nor thou, Aurora, quit Tithonus’ cave, Nor drive retiring darkness yet away. Ere these my rustic hands a garland twine, Ere yet my tongue endite a single song, For her I mean to hail my Valentine, Sweet maiden, fairest of the virgin throng. _Dodsley’s Miscell._ Attend we upon ELIA. Hark, how triumphantly that noble herald of the college of kindness proclaims the day! “Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine! Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable arch-flamen of Hymen! Immortal Go-between! who and what manner of person art thou? Art thou but a name, typifying the restless principle which impels poor humans to seek perfection in union? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves? Mysterious personage! like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar.--Thou comest attended with thousands and ten thousands of little Loves, and the air is Brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings; singing Cupids are thy choristers, and thy precentors; and instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee. “In other words, this is the day on which those charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each other at every street and turning. The weary and all for-spent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and bell-wires. In these little visual interpretations, no emblem is so common as the _heart_,--that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears,--the bestuck and bleeding heart; it is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations than an opera-hat. What authority we have in history or mythology for placing the head-quarters and metropolis of god Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very clear; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any other thing. Else we might easily imagine, upon some other system which might have prevailed for any thing which our pathology knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, ‘Madam, my _liver_ and fortune are entirely at your disposal;’ or putting a delicate question, ‘Amanda, have you a _midriff_ to bestow?’ But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neighbours wait at animal and anatomical distance.