of rural imagery, unconsciously but surely give to the human heart a
deep perception of that graceful creed which is beautifully termed
the religion of nature. They give purity and strength to feeling,
and through the imagination, which owes so much of its power to their
impressions, they raise our sentiments until we feel them kindled into
union with the lustre of a holier light than even that which leads our
steps to God through the beauty of his own works. For this reason it is,
that all imaginative affections are much stronger in the country than in
the town. Love in the one place is not only freer from the coarseness
of passion, but incomparably more seductive to the heart, and more
voluptuous in its conception of the ideal beauty with which it invests
the object of its attachment. Nor is this surprising. In the country
its various associations are essentially impressive and poetical.
Moonlight--evening--the still glen--the river side--the flowery
hawthorn--the bower--the crystal well--not forgetting the melody of
the woodland songster--are all calculated, to make the heart and
fancy surrender themselves to the blandishments of a passion that is
surrounded by objects so sweetly linked to their earliest sympathies.
But this is not all. In rural life, neither the heart nor the eye is
distracted by the claims of rival beauty, when challenging, in the
various graces of many, that admiration which might be bestowed on one
alone, did not each successive impression efface that which went before
it. In the country, therefore, in spring meadows, among summer groves,
and beneath autumnal skies, most certainly does the passion of love sink
deepest into the human heart, and pass into the greatest extremes of
happiness or pain. Here is where it may be seen, cheek to cheek, now
in all the shivering ecstacies of intense rapture, or again moping
carelessly along, with pale brow and flashing eye, sometimes writhing
in the agony of undying attachment, or chanting its mad lay of hope and
love in a spirit of fearful happiness more affecting than either misery