the former, and so cannot be outweighed by them. In the judgment of the
modern world,

'_Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all_.

To love, in fact, though not exactly said to be incumbent upon all men,
is yet endowed with something that is almost of the nature of a duty. If
a man cannot love, it is looked on as a sort of moral misfortune, if not
as a moral fault in him. And when a man can love, and does love
successfully, then it is held that his whole nature has burst out into
blossom. The imaginative literature of the modern world centres chiefly
about this human crisis; and its importance in literature is but a
reflection of its importance in life. It is, as it were, the sun of the
world of sentiment--the source of its lights and colours, and also of
its shadows. It is the crown of man's existence; it gives life its
highest quality; and, if we can believe what those who have known it
tell us, earth under its influence seems to be melting into, and to be
almost joined with, heaven.

All this language, however, about love, no matter how true in a certain
sense it may be, is emphatically true about it in a certain sense only,
and is by no means to be taken without reserve. It is emphatically not
true about love in general, but only about love as modified in a certain
special way. The form of the affection, so to speak, is more important
than the substance of it. It will need but little consideration to show
us that this is so. Love is a thing that can take countless forms; and
were not the form, for the modern world, the thing of the first
importance, the praise bestowed upon all forms of it would be equal, or
graduated only with reference to intensity. But the very reverse of this