look exclusively on what was common and dull. He accepted a
prose ideal, let himself go blind of many sympathies by
disuse; and if he were young and witty, or beautiful, wilfully
forewent these advantages. He joined himself to the following
of what, in the old mythology of love, was prettily called
NONCHALOIR; and in an odd mixture of feelings, a fling of
self-respect, a preference for selfish liberty, and a great
dash of that fear with which honest people regard serious
interests, kept himself back from the straightforward course
of life among certain selected activities. And now, all of a
sudden, he is unhorsed, like St. Paul, from his infidel
affectation. His heart, which has been ticking accurate
seconds for the last year, gives a bound and begins to beat
high and irregularly in his breast. It seems as if he had
never heard or felt or seen until that moment; and by the
report of his memory, he must have lived his past life between
sleep and waking, or with the preoccupied attention of a brown
study. He is practically incommoded by the generosity of his
feelings, smiles much when he is alone, and develops a habit
of looking rather blankly upon the moon and stars. But it is
not at all within the province of a prose essayist to give a
picture of this hyperbolical frame of mind; and the thing has
been done already, and that to admiration. In ADELAIDE, in
Tennyson's MAUD, and in some of Heine's songs, you get the
absolute expression of this midsummer spirit. Romeo and
Juliet were very much in love; although they tell me some
German critics are of a different opinion, probably the same
who would have us think Mercutio a dull fellow. Poor Antony
was in love, and no mistake. That lay figure Marius, in LES
MISERABLES, is also a genuine case in his own way, and worth