their troth was tacitly plighted to each other, and now it was almost unconsciously that their lips met and sealed the unspoken contract. That first, long, passionate kiss of requited love! Its raptures have been the theme of glowing prose, of impassioned verse, in all ages and climes; the powers of language have been exhausted upon it, the tongue and the pen of genius have, for centuries, borrowed for its description the warmest hues of fancy and imagination—and yet how far short do they fall of the reality! how impossible to express in words an electric torrent of feeling, more tumultuous than joy, more burning than the desert’s thirst,—yet sweeter and more delicious than childhood’s dream of Paradise, pouring over the heart a stream of bliss, steeping the senses in oblivion of all earthly cares, and so mysteriously blending the physical with the immaterial elements of our nature, that we feel as if, in that embrace, we could transfuse a portion of our soul and spirit into the beloved object on whose lip that first kiss of long–treasured love is imprinted. Brief and fleeting moments! they are gone almost before the mind is conscious of them! They could not, indeed, be otherwise than brief, for the agony of joy is like that of pain, and exhausted nature would sink under its continued excess. Precious moments, indeed! to none can they be known more than once in life; to very many, they can never be known at all. They can neither be felt nor imagined by the mere worldling, nor the sensualist; the sources of that stream of bliss must be unadulterated by aught low, or selfish; it is not enough that “Heart and soul and sense in concert move:” desire must go hand in hand with purity, and virtue be the handmaid of passion, or the blissful scene will lose its fairest and brightest hues. The step of some servant was heard approaching; and Lucy, uttering a hasty good–night, returned to her room, where she bolted her door, and gave herself up to the varied emotions by which she was overcome. Tears bedewed her eyes, but they were not tears of grief; her bosom was agitated, but it was not the agitation of sorrow; her pillow was sleepless, but she courted not slumber, for her mind dwelt on the events of the past day; and gratitude for her lover’s return, together with the full assurance of his untarnished honour, and undiminished affection, rendered her waking thoughts sweeter than any that sleep could have borrowed from the land of dreams.