The one great fact which pervades the universe is _action_. The very existence of Love demands its activity, and, hence, the highest happiness is attained by a normal and legitimate development of this element of our being. The heart demands an object upon which to lavish the largess of its affection. In the absence of all others, a star, a flower, or even a bird, will receive this homage. The bird warbles a gay answer to the well-known voice, the flower repays the careful cultivator by displaying its richest tints, the star twinkles a bright "good evening" to the lonely watcher, and yet withal there is an unsatisfied longing in the lover's heart, to which neither can respond; the desire to be loved! Hence, the perfect peace of reciprocated love. If its laws are violated, nature seeks revenge in the utter depression or prostration of the vital energies. Thus has the Divine Law-giver engraven His command on our very being. To love is, therefore, a duty, the fulfillment of which should engage our noblest powers. This emotion manifests itself in several phases, prominent among which is filial affection, the natural harmonizer of society. Paternal love includes a new element--protection. Greater than either, and second only in fortitude to maternal affection, is CONJUGAL LOVE. "He is blest in Love alone Who loves for years and loves but one."--HUNT. With Swedenborg, we may assert, "_that there is given love truly conjugal, which at this day is so rare, that it is not known what it is, and scarce that it is_." The same author has defined this relation to be a union of Love and Wisdom. The fundamental law of conjugal love is _fidelity to one love_. God created but one Eve, and the essential elements of paternal and maternal love pre-suppose and necessitate, for their normal development, the Love of _one_ only. Again, Love is the sun of woman's existence. Only under its influence does she unfold the noblest powers of her being. Woman's intuitions should therefore be taken as the true love-gauge. If she desire a plurality of loves, it must be a law of her nature; but is communism the desire of our wives and daughters? No! Every act which renders woman dear to us, denounces such an idea and reveals the exclusive sacredness of her Love. As condemning promiscuity in this relation, we may cite the lovers' pledges and oaths of fidelity, the self-perpetuity of Love itself, the common instincts of mankind, as embodied in public sentiment, and the inherent consciousness that first love should he kept inviolable forever. Again, Love is conservative. It clings tenaciously to all the memories connected with its first object. The scenes consecrated to "Love's young dream" are sacred to every heart. The woodland with its winding paths and arbors, the streamlet bordered with drooping violets and dreamy pimpernel, the clouds, and even "the very tones in which we spoke," are indelibly imprinted on the memory. There is also the "mine and thine"