It is a good thing to love! So much mawkish sentimentality and bombastic nonsense, so many white-muslined tears and boarding-school sentimentalities, have been heaped around its counterfeit, that healthy minds not unnaturally scoff at the passion--until they feel it! and thus has one of the highest emotions of which our nature is capable, been brought into undeserved disrepute. A deep, true, earnest, unselfish affection, such as an honest man (“the noblest work of God”) is capable of feeling for a woman worthy to call it forth, raises, purifies, and spiritualises his whole being, enlarges his sympathies, and (by affording a new motive for exertion) stimulates his faculties, and thus causes him to do the work he may lay his hand to, better than he would have executed it without such an incentive. The Apostle tells us, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar;” and a great truth is embodied in the text;--a nature capable of forming a deep, unselfish attachment to one of God’s creatures, raises its possessor in the scale of creation, and enables him to adore his Maker and love his fellows with a zealous earnestness and reality, of which a self-engrossed character is incapable--therefore, as we began by saying--it is a good thing to love! As Mrs. Colville’s recovery progressed, it was Ernest Carrington who drew her about in her garden-chair, and as she grew yet stronger, it was on his arm she leaned when, with feeble steps, she began once again to resume her daily walks; and as, with grateful heart, Emily watched the colour slowly returning to her mother’s pale cheeks, she almost felt as if it was to Ernest that she owed her beloved parent’s restoration. One morning, about a month after Mr. Pillanbill had finally taken leave, and when every vestige of his first syllable had been swallowed, and his last syllable (which was a very long one) had been paid, Ernest, whilst waiting until Mrs. Colville was ready for her accustomed walk, had a letter with a foreign postmark put into his hand. Emily, who watched him while he read it, saw him start and change colour. “Is anything the matter?” she inquired, as he refolded the letter. “Yes--no--that is, I think you cannot any longer be anxious about Mrs. Colville: her health, thank God, is perfectly restored. “Oh yes, I trust so,” was the reply, “but why do you ask?’ “Because I must leave you for a time; and if you felt nervous or uncomfortable about your mother, we could arrange for Percy to return a week or two before the holidays--what do you say?--he might be a comfort to you?”