And then follows Coleridge's own account of love, of which it can only be said, that, if he had written it when he was younger, it would probably have been as perfect in form and expression as it is inclusive in what we might call the categories of love: "Coleridge. But, above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life, even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away, and which, in all our lovings, is the love. "Eliza. There is something here (pointing to her heart) that seems to understand you, but it wants the word that would make it understand itself. "Katherine. I too seem to feel what you mean. Interpret the feeling for us. Coleridge. I mean that willing sense of the unsufficingness of the self for itself which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own, that quiet, perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, and, finding, again seeks on; - lastly, when 'life's changeful orb has passed the full,' a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experi When you have read this, you feel that it is correct, and even affecting. But yet "What wants that knave That a king should have?" something is wanted, and in that something everything! The recent discussions about the Talmud have disclosed a depth of benightedness in society, even among men whom you might expect to know better, that is extremely irritating, if not surprising. Surprising, indeed, it is not; for it is only the old difference between seeing and not seeing which everlastingly divides men and women. All the talent is nothing, and all the culture is nothing; do you see? is the question. To descend to a trivial illustration. A reviewer, not very long ago, attacked a preface written by Dr. Johnson, upon the hypothesis that it was written by Dr. Latham. It was said, and it might well have been true, that the reviewer was a learned and accomplished man. Nothing more likely; yet a child of seven, with the sensibility which he lacked, would not have fallen into his error, or any error of a similar kind. To take another illustration. There are millions of people, including men of great learning and piety, who seem absolutely blind to the difference between the Christ of the Latin imagination and the childlike Christ of the Teutonic imagination. But to return to Love and the Talmud. Every one will remember the exultation (surprising to those who are familiar with their Apocrypha as well as with their Bible) with which certain Talmudic deliverances about women were received when the article of M. Deutsch appeared in the Quarterly Review. "What becomes now of the Teutonic origin of the household virtues?" asked an able pen in the ! Pall Mall Gazette. Whoever has said that the household virtues were of Teutonic origin has talked nonsense. But the question as to Love, between the Western spirit and the Oriental or Semitic spirit, has nothing to do, one way or the other, with the household virtues. Let us try and see what really it is. Many of our readers probably know Miss Dora Greenwell as the author of some tender poetry and some thoughtful prose. She is a perfectly orthodox writer, as anybody who has read her "Two Friends" must be aware. She has also written a set of poems of the sonnet type, entitled "Liber Veritatis." There is a series of tenderly passionate love poems, not on a level with Mrs. Brown ing's Portuguese sonnets either in the passion or the poetry, but quite real and true. Their author must know something of what love really is. Now, in the little book called "Two Friends"-which, as we have stated, is strictly orthodox-Dora Greenwell boldly says that love is not to be found at all in the New Testament. "The silence of the New Testament is a wonderiul thing." Not at all wonderful say we, for love is utterly alien to the Oriental or Semitic spirit. The curious thing is that Miss Greenwell does not go on to remark that love is also wholly wanting in the New Testament. And the reason is the same. Love considered as a passion, or the desire to possess something beautiful; love as household friendship, with special regard shown to the weaker by the stronger; and love, as mere appetite (appetite, we say, as distinguished from passion), you find in Semitic and Oriental writings; but there is no room in the Semitic or Oriental spirit (even though it were shown that chivalry itself came from the Arab) for love of the highest type known to the Western mind. It is worth while, in these c fusing days, to recall the hig the word "love," nor is it place it alongside of the ma counterfeits which pass for it ton. The novelists, as a rul lost all power of painting, what it is! Charlotte Bronte about it. So does Mr. Charle does George Eliot. So does And there are others. to Nor does the difference end here. The chara worth making novels about worth making pems about. ficiently plain that the huma ineradicable suspicion or preser thing better than what it is so off with. That something bet the strongest desire, more tha attachment, and more than th bousehold virtue-may be a flo only once in a hundred the time come to disbelieve th bloom? Or to pretend that you in the streets, or find it by me it, or grow it like mustard an deny that it is the flower whic ered and wern is (not to put th as much as to have made a lot e vented a new pill?: There was once a footman wh "My love, she is my heart's d aino And-love of truth, and all that makes a mansnu jo sдnd more on This is not quite satisfactory, and the word see an of fame," are least satisfactory of all. If there a is any thing to make a man careless of "fame'ou a te pas Lane Myer THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM confused and yme: Francis Turner Palgrar- HENRY J. THURSTAN..e.) Written by Dance PUBLIC LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. 1858. 's delight. y; کی |