appear and reappear and continue to attract; but the regard changes,
quits the sign and attaches to the substance. This repairs the wounded
affection. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a game of permutation
and combination of all possible positions of the parties, to employ all
the resources of each, and acquaint each with the weakness of the
other.... At last they discover that all which at first drew them
together--those once sacred features, that magical play of charms--was
deciduous, had a prospective end like the scaffolding by which the house
was built, and the purification of the intellect and the heart from year
to year is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and
wholly above their consciousness.... Thus are we put in training for a
love which knows not sex nor person nor partiality, but which seeks
wisdom and virtue everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and
wisdom.... There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the
man, and make his happiness dependent on a person or persons. But in
health the mind is presently seen again," etc.

All this is not love, but the merest literary coquetry. Love is
different from this. Lady Burton, when a very young girl, and six years
before her engagement, met Burton at Boulogne. They met in the street,
but did not speak. A few days later they were formally introduced at a
dance. Of this she writes: "That was a night of nights. He waltzed with
me once, and spoke to me several times. I kept the sash where he put his
arm around me and my gloves, and never wore them again."

A glance at what Emerson says about marriage shows that he suspected
that institution. He can hardly speak of it without some sort of caveat
or precaution. "Though the stuff of tragedy and of romances is in a
moral union of two superior persons whose confidence in each other for
long years, out of sight and in sight, and against all appearances, is