ings and the long evenings, when the tapestry grows almost mechanically beneath the hand, but when the mind is wholly given up to the heart! A young girl has rarely any thing to call forth that romance inherent in every nature but the idea of her lover; and what a world of deep and beautiful feeling is lavished there! Every reverie in which she indulges is a poem, filled with the fanciful, the true, and yet the unreal.
But, however deeply and entirely a man may love, he can only yield to its influence the hurried moment, the occasional thought. Every day brings its toil and its struggle; and to meet these demands his mind must give its utmost energies. He cannot pass weeks, months—ay, and years—the eye fixed upon its daily task, but the fancies wandering far, far away. His soul must be in its labour: all the active paths in life are his own, and he must bring to their mastery, hope, thought, patience, and strength; he may turn sometimes to the flowers on the way-side, but the great business of life must be for ever before him. The heart which a woman could utterly fill were unworthy to be her shrine. His rule over her is despotic and unmodified; but her power over him must be shared with a thousand other influences.
Francesca herself would more than have par-
