CHAPTER XXXI.

FIRST AND LAST LOVE.

"And the country proverb known,

That every man should take his own."

Puck.

LOVE? There is no single word in our language which conveys, at the same time, so many joyous anticipations, and so many painful recollections. Woman's love! what is it? An unchangeable, eternal thing, or a flickering fleeting shadow; man's guiding star to happiness and peace, or an ignis fatuus that lures him on to wretchedness and woe; the grand aim of all his hopes, or only the prophetic beginning of his misery?

Ask that impetuous youth, with eager elasticity in his step, and beaming rapture in his eye, coming up yon shady lane where he has just given his heart to another, and received another's in return, what he thinks of woman's love, and he will at once declare, with the utmost sincerity, founded on a thorough conviction of its truth, that it is pure as the love of angels, and eternal as the everlasting hills; that sooner will the sun forget to shine, or the moon to charioteer in the heavens, than woman's love shall grow cold, or change, or ever lose one spark of its intensity or brightness!

But here comes a traveller of another description. His step is slow and hesitating, his cheek is pale, his eye is troubled, and you observe, he is no longer young, as the dry wiry wrinkles and stray grey hairs, provokingly testify. He seems sad. Shall we speak to him? Probably he has been forsaken -jilted!

"What is woman's love, my friend?"

"Woman's love! Tell it not in time; pronounce it not in

eternity. It is deceitful-changeful-despotic-fickle-illusive-a lie! Believe me, there is no such thing in the wide universe, as woman's love. Put not thy confidence in woman. Toy with her not; trust her not. She only wooes you to her heart that you may feel how cold a thing it is; she syrenlike, allures you within her meshes, only to vanquish and destroy, and then laugh at your extreme simplicity, and mock your bitter agony !"

Then, how many kinds of love are there? First love; second love; love in teens; and old love renewed. Which of these is the most enduring and true?

My dashing young friend, Frank Surface, asserts most energetically it must be the first, probably for this very reason, that time with him has not yet tested its sincerity. My worthy and long-tried friend, Joseph Sharp again, assures me, with a peculiar shrug of the shoulders, and a knowing twinkle of the eye, that "second thoughts are best." Then, my little nephew in his teens, by his sighs and his tears, and his blind devotion to that little coquetish puss, cousin Jane, would fain make me believe, there is nothing like "Calf love," while that elderly couple seated lovingly side by side in the shady arbour, would equally impress me with the notion, that there is no love like "old love renewed !"

And now, gentle reader, amidst this conflict of opinion, both as regards the existence, or non-existence, of woman's love, and, supposing it to have a real existence-how am I to decide the question—what kind of love is the most enduring and true?

Look down on the beautiful Howe, with its clumps of trees and daisied meadows, its flocks of sheep and lowing kine, and follow the course of the gently flowing Dean, now kissing the wild flowers on its verdant banks, then dashing fretfully o'er the mimic rocks, until, coming near us, placid and calm it sings its quiet evening song beneath the windows of yonder cottage, embosomed among spreading elms, and festooned with roses and honeysuckle, and the sweetly scented briar. Gaze somewhat

more intently, and you will observe a beautiful girl in white seated at an open casement, around which the jessamine and the rose, with undisguised rivalry, strive which will have the preference first to kiss her honied lips. Observe the rich auburn of her sunny ringlets, stirred gently by the evening breeze, the deep thoughtfulness of her dreamy eyes of soft, celestial blue, the broad and high forehead of marble whiteness, the vermilion cheek and pouting lip, and you will admit you have never seen a more fascinating or beautiful woman. Your interest in this fair damsel will increase when I tell you she has left harp and song, the merry dance, and festal hall, that she might gaze awhile on hill and dale, and the glories of the setting sun, and listen to the soft breathings of her muchloved streamlet, hushing all around to repose and rest. But the secret spring of all this abstraction and solicitude takes its rise in the fact that within one short hour she would meet the choice of her heart, and be in the arms of her beloved.

"How very long this day hath seemed to me! The hours hung so heavily, I thought that evening would never come. My books ceased to interest me, my harp emitted strange and doleful sounds, the festal hall to me had lost its charms, and when I pensively gazed from my casement on the scenes I loved so well, the trees would only sigh, the streamlet fret and mourn, the roses around would tempt me with their fullblown blossoms, then pettishly shrink back, as they pitied my sadness, and the evening sun, to me, sank down to rest, not in a burnished couch of glory, but in a dark and troubled cloud."

"But why this sadness, love."

"Because, Edmund, this was to be our last meeting."

"Oh, surely not our last meeting, Lucy. True, we must now part-but not for ever! To-morrow's sun will see me on the great deep, voyaging on to the Indies, but I go there with

your sanction and approval, love, and in a few years I shall return to cast my treasures and my heart at your feet, and to spend together my hard-earned rupees in a style and manner befitting your station and condition in life. Is there not something noble in the sacrifice ?"

"I freely grant there is; but hearts may change with change of scene.

"What! Distance and time obliterate the land-marks of love? On the contrary, in hearts where true and real affection hath taken root, distance only serves to strike its tendrils the stronger, and

'Time the impression deeper makes,

As streams their channels deeper wear.

"Yes! So sing the poets, Edmund; but true affection, tested by the rough hand of time and distance, is subjected to a great trial, and sometimes-sometimes gives way."

"Oh! I understand you, Lucy-(kiss me, my love)—you mean that we who go forth to the world, exposed to its trials, and temptations, and varied duties, are more apt to be overcome by the blandishments and allurements which may surround us than those we leave behind in comparative retirement, and unexposed to the same temptations?"

Exactly so, my Edmund.”

“Then, who shall first fail in their allegiance?"

Oh, do not ask that question. It implies a latent doubt in the mind which I am sure neither you nor I entertain. What I more particularly alluded to was your sojourn in a foreign clime, where everything that met the eye or reached the ear would be strange and new, and the possibility of all combined causing a forgetfulness of home, and of those trusting and loving hearts who cling the more closely to those they love in proportion as time and hope wear away."

"Then your anxiety, Lucy, regarding the future, arises not so much from an apprehension that your lover may turn an idolator of wealth, to the exclusion of all the finer feelings of his nature, but from an innate jealous fear—”

"For shame, Edmund!"

"That his eyes may be dazzled and his heart touched by the swarthy charms of some dusky, dreamy beauty in the golden bowers of Ind? Then I swear—”

"Don't swear, Edmund!"

"I solemnly swear, that sooner shall the sun forget to shine-"

"What noise was that among the bushes?"

"Or trees forget to leaf themselves in summer"That noise again?"

"Than that I shall ever forget-THEE!"

"Hush! Some eavesdropper, Edmund, is nigh!" "Beloved of my soul ! my own! my beautiful! my love for thee is pure as that of the angels, and eternal as the everlasting hills."

"We are discovered. Farewell!"

"Change? Oh, no! my love can never change-heaven and earth my witnesses!"

"One word more, and we are lost. Farewell !"

"Stay! Lucy, stay!-one moment stay!"

“ "No, not one moment, Edmund. See, take this locket; 'tis in the form of a heart, and within is a ringlet of my hair, festooned like forget-me-not. Keep it ; never part with it; and if ever I should prove false, present it to me, that the sight thereof may fill me with remorse and shame. That sound again? Dearest Edmund, farewell."

"My dear, dear Lucy!"

My own dear Edmund!"

And thus they parted;

and if ever man and woman believed their love to and for each other, at the time, was pure, and true, and unchangeable, it was the two actors in the little secret drama now narrated.

I dislike long introductions either to a sermon, a poem, a tale, or a novel, so will neither tease nor weary the reader by minute, stereotyped details of my farewell to the lovely Howe, or of my voyage out to India; or, when arrived there, tell