The cynical brow may scowl incredulity, and the worldling scoff at my declaration; but I aver, that were crowns at my disposal I would now give them all in exchange for one spring time on that spot again, could I be blessed with the same sensations as I then had, boyish as they may be deemed,-nay, I would resign the sceptre of a universe for such a revisitation of calm, celestial, innocent delight. Alas! this cannot be; time and fate have laid their seal of interdiction upon it for ever! My wish for a companion was supplied, in my mind, by the object that naturally became so at last. I had been struck with the manners and person of E- when first casually thrown in her way. I used to fancy such a companion with me, till I saw her form at my side, and almost heard the music of her voice. I became acquainted with her at the house of a relation. One day, escorting her and a companion to the house of the latter, I was invited to remain and return with E- in the evening. I did not hesitate to accept the invitation. After this, it seemed to be a matter of course that I should escort the friend home. E frequently went also, and we returned to town together and alone. This was often repeated. In returning, something, at last, took place in our deportment towards each other, in our mutual communications, and our sidelong glances, that ripened into confidence. This is the first step to love; but we dreamed not of love; we knew not then what it meant, each being pleased with the other, unknowing the cause. It was that mysterious, invisible, incomprehensible interchange of sympathetic feeling which happens unconsciously, and arises from an affinity between two young souls, that know not they are made for one another. I generally left my fair companion at her father's house, which I well recollect gazing at, I knew not why, long after she had entered it, and the door was closed. I then returned home, thinking of another interview, yet unknowing why the thought of it gave me so much pleasure. I still visited, rather more frequently than before, my favourite retreat. While I gazed upon the stream, I thought how pleasant it would be if she contemplated it with me. I wound along the bank, and thought that there might be one being in the world who would not mock me if I related my feelings to her and day by day these ideas engrossed more than ever my imagination. I loved my retreat better than ever. I was never diverted, when there, from the thoughts which I wished always to keep uppermost ;-this was sure to be the case elsewhere--tasks, intrusive questions, and even the necessary formalities of life, being regarded by me, at last, as a sort of injustice, in diverting my attention from objects that I wished should engross it wholly. One fine spring evening, the sides of the long narrow lane that led to the residence of E's friend being covered with primroses and cowslips, E and myself were returning together, when the beauty of the weather, the stillness around, and a confidence without a reason that I was a favourite with my companion, emboldened me to speak of my affection for her!-no, I was not wise enough to discover that, nor bold enough to mention it if I had. I simply began to detail some of my youthful feelings, to interest her in what related to myself. I trusted her, under promise of secrecy, with my favourite retreat, my dislike of most of my companions, who were for ever rating 66 we me for my abstraction from them and curious to discover its cause. I told her that their boisterous games, constantly repeated, fatigued me with sameness, and I preferred being alone, half my time, to mingling with them. How naturally one is led to confide in woman! At last she said she should like to visit the spot of which I was so fond. My heart beat quick with delight; "But how could she be long enough absent from home?" "Nothing is easier," I replied: "would you be afraid to trust yourself with me for one half-hour?" She hesitatingly answered, "No!" I was delighted with the trust she reposed in me. Yet pure in soul as we both were, why should she have answered differently? I then proposed that the next evening we escorted our friend home, we should, after parting with her, visit the wood, which we might easily do, and get home without being missed for a longer time than usual. She assented, and we parted better pleased than ever with each other: she at having given me pleasure which I could not disguise, and I at having received such a mark of her confidence. I was in my sixteenth year, and E- - had just entered her fifteenth, the most enviable age of life. The day had been delightful; a festival of May's own giving, of the mother of Love herself. The sun had set just as we were returning. We went some distance towards the town, and turned down a narrow lane leading to the wood. I fancied— it might have been only fancy-that her hand, which was fast locked in mine, trembled for the first few steps; my heart palpitated, and a thrilling pleasure came over my frame such as I never felt before-w were both silent, till in a few minutes we reached the seat among the firs, both panting a little from walking quickly up the hill. Can I ever forget that moment, while I am a thinking, animated being?never! Not a cloud showed "its silver lining to the night :" there was a haze arising from the earth, that greyly but thinly veiled all the low part of the prospect, upon which the full round still moon slept" in chilly radiance :-it was the lover's moon to us-the most delicious light by which love's eyes ever see an object; but we dreamt not of its being so. The dark shade of the firs above contrasted well with the wan light that came streaming in among their trunks, branchless nearly to the tops. I now told my fair friend that we had still to see the valley and stream below. The thick trees that met over the narrow descending path, seemed, by the blackness of their shade, to appal her. She stopped, hesitated, and looked me full in the face. The moon shone brightly on her beautiful countenance; she spoke not, but the expression of her mild blue eye was fearful and womanly. I assured her I knew the way well if she would rely upon my guidance; that there was nothing to fear; and she proceeded. We soon arrived at the borders of the stream, in my little Tempe, that I would not have exchanged for Pactolus and all its treasures. The dashing water flung its white spray here and there into the light of a solitary moonbeam that pierced the dense foliage of the overhanging trees, the shade of which, the tranquillity, and the novelty of the scene, united, gave a sensation of fear to the lovely girl, and she pressed my hand and kept herself closer to my side-was silent a few minutes, and then burst into tears. She had a quick sensibility and acute feelings. I enquired in vain why she wept, and hurried her homewards. She told me afterwards she did not know the cause; it was the overpowering rush 66 of something to her heart, that vented itself in tears. We parted as we never parted before. I was at last certain of being able to communicate my thoughts where they would be heard and treasured up in confidence. I slept little that night, but what I did was a repose of bliss. I arose with the dawn, and flew to the spot where I had been so happy a few hours before, lingering there till hunger and my daily learning recalled me to breakfast and labour. I passed the day in an exhilaration of spirits that all perceived, while the cause none knew but myself. Talk of first love as the world may, we never experience in a second any thing half so sweet. The object beloved the second time may be more amiable-may be more deserving of affection, but in the first there is a novelty of circumstance and feeling-an untasted cup of joy, which in a repetition falls short of its original flavour. We are, in a. second affection, going over a path already trodden; in the first, we explore a new track covered with wild roses and spontaneous luxuriance, that diffuses odours, which lose of their freshness on being again exhaled. We always know we are in love, the second time, from our former experience. The first time we are novices, and receive our maiden impressions gilded by brighter hopes, and hallowed by a sanctity that casts almost a religious holiness over them. Repetition of love grows more and more sensual: it is in youth's first affection only that a love like that of angels is exchanged-ethereal, unstained, lucid with heavenly purity. First love is like youth, virtuous, full of generous impulses and exalted feelings. In successive visitations it becomes corrupted, as in advancing years we get more and more the creatures of circumstances, interest, and the world's custom. Youth is infinitely nearer the optimism contemplated by moralists and philosophers than manhood. "Love," too, it has been observed wisely, " is always nearer allied to melancholy than to jollity or mirth." The instances recorded of the purest and most exalted passion are among the sedate temperaments. The souls that feed upon themselves, that keep back from the multitude, that cannot put up with commonplace, but aspire to idealities and creations of their own-these have generally the earliest, the most durable, and the deepest impressions from love. was After the before-mentioned walk to my solitude, many stolen opportunities occurred when we visited it together, more dear to us for their less frequent occurrence. On one occasion, I well remember, we contrived by a little art to pass an entire afternoon there. Emade the confidant of my sensations, and I imparted to her thoughts laid up in my mind, that had long seemed to ask to be communicated. There is a simplicity in young love-a contentedness to be satisfied with things trifling in themselves, that is one great proof of its virtue. If we walked on the side of the river and talked of every thing but love; if we watched the fish spring from the water at the rich painted insects that skimmed over it, flashing their silvery scales in the sun; if we climbed among the masses of granite, that, strewed over the side of the hill in huge blocks or cubes, seemed as if they had been flung there in some Titanic combat, we were equally happy. Idle as we might appear to a third person, our minutes flew too quickly. I recollect how, seated upon a fragment of a rock, breathing quick with the exercise of ascending the hill, we gazed on each other in silence, and could have gazed for ever; and how, while we really loved each other, we were stran gers to the very existence of love. Nothing is so feeble and artless as the language of real passion-oftentimes its communion is not intrusted to words, but its interchanges pass unconsciously from heart to heart in the language perhaps of unbodied humanity. We said things silly enough to others respecting the flowers we plucked or the sensations we felt, that were treasures of wisdom in each other's views. We had no idea of any thing good or great in the world that excluded our then situation from its limits. One day I took "Paul and Virginia" in my pocket, and we read it together. The tale affected us deeply, so that we shed tears, and the perusal opened our eyes and led to the asking our hearts if we could love as strongly as St. Pierre's lovers, provided we were loved in return. It is thus the mind leads on the affections from stage to stage. What we thought, was at length communicated-in what way at first I am unable to recall to mind :-I know that we vowed eternal constancy to each other-that no peril should make us break our engagements, and that we would keep our mutual affection to our own breasts. There was a shade of the romantic drawn over our intercourse, and it was also romantic in durability-death only having snapped the chord that bound our hearts together, ere the slightest chill had sullied the ardour of our affection. By a strange coincidence, our first and last meetings were in the Spring season. It was an April evening, soft and mild as a clear sky, a breezeless atmosphere, and a deelining sun could make it, when our final interview took place. E seemed in low spirits. There was a foreboding of something evil in the future hanging over us, of the kind that prompts a belief that the soul has prophetic powers which our present organization is not perfect enough to develope, and yet affording indistinct glimpses of what is to come. Madness could not erase that evening from my mind. We sat on the spot where we were accustomed to sit, we spoke little, we listened to the broken water, looked at each other, said something about our future expectations of happiness, sighed we knew not why, and, with a depression of spirits for which there was no cause, rose to return homewards. I pressed the lovely little E to my heart--I pressed her lips to mine, never imagining it was for the last time, and that the worm would be shortly their lover, and riot upon their paleness. We parted at her father's door, each thinking still of coming happinessof future prospects. In three weeks from that day our love had passed away for ever. E- had left me for the place where no knowledge nor device cometh." I had sat with a bursting heart on the sod that covered her remains! The dream-song of our happiness had ended, and the remainder of that Spring was to be a black winter to my soul. 66 Never, then, can I forget Spring. As we advance in years, we are more fond of the remembrance even of our youthful griefs, and all that was part of them, as if they were designed to bind us faster to earth, as we approach nearer to the period when we must leave it. Youth and Love have long departed from me-Spring remains. Its annual visitation is the only jewel, of my once rich casket of pleasures, left to me--I still possess it, but like a miser's treasure, only to be hoarded; yet I hail its approach still, my old heart palpitates with a sort of rapture-a laboured demonstration of joy at the sight of the young leaves, and the rescuscitation of nature from her wintry desolation. I watch the flowers in my garden from my window, and mark them gradually unfold themselves—I see throughout creation a memento of golden times, and mark with melancholy feelings the beautiful sunsets of the season. I stand at my door and inhale the breeze after a genial shower, and feel it penetrate to the very springs of life and revivify all of my frame that time has not indurated against its influence. Nature was perhaps never dearer to me. I still pluck the early primrose, and listen to the bird's matin song, as the sun begins to march up the sky-for I have ever been an early riser. He who is not, knows but half of nature. At such moments I call up long-buried sensations. Youth and love mingle in my reminiscences, for a moment, with the present time. I fancy the broken images of the past are present realities, stretch my hand to grasp them, and discover I am a weak old man, whose last Spring will shortly take wing after departed Youth and Love. J. His foreman was a lusty black, An honest fellow; But one who had an ugly knack Having to cross the vat aforesaid, Like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey. In all directions round about The negro absentee was sought, That our fat Black was now Brown Stout, |