beauty and grace? And do all men worship these forms of beauty
which the imagination creates? Can any woman, or any man, seen
exactly as they are, incite a love which is kindred to worship?
And is any love worthy to be called love, if it does not inspire
emotions which prompt to self-sacrifice, labor, and lofty ends?
Can a woman's smiles incite to Herculean energies, and drive the
willing worshipper to Aonian heights, unless under these smiles are
seen the light of life and the blessedness of supernatural fervor?
Is there, and can there be, a perpetuity in mortal charms without
the recognition or the supposition of a moral beauty connected with
them, which alone is pure and imperishable, and which alone creates
the sacred ecstasy that revels in the enjoyment of what is divine,
or what is supposed to be divine, not in man, but in the
conceptions of man,--the ever-blazing glories of goodness or of
truth which the excited soul doth see in the eyes and expression of
the adored image? It is these archetypes of divinity, real or
fancied, which give to love all that is enduring. Destroy these,
take away the real or fancied glories of the soul and mind, and the
holy flame soon burns out. No mortal love can last, no mortal love
is beautiful, unless the visions which the mind creates are not
more or less realized in the object of it, or when a person, either
man or woman, is not capable of seeing ideal perfections. The
loves of savages are the loves of brutes. The more exalted the
character and the soul, the greater is the capacity of love, and
the deeper its fervor. It is not the object of love which creates
this fervor, but the mind which is capable of investing it with
glories. There could not have been such intensity in Dante's love
had he not been gifted with the power of creating so lofty and
beautiful an ideal; and it was this he worshipped,--not the real
Beatrice, but the angelic beauty he thought he saw in her. Why