love, is frequently aware that he is arousing it in others; and could he probe to the very fibres of his thinking soul, he would confess to a certain keen satisfaction in the fact of his being able to revivify the old restless yearning of a pain which is sweeter to the lonely soul than pleasure.
Now this expression of the "lonely soul" is used advisedly, because, in sad truth, every human soul is lonely. Lonely at birth,—still more lonely at death. During its progress through life it gathers around it what it can in the way of crumbs of love, grains of affection, taking them tenderly and with tears of gratefulness. But it is always conscious of solitude,—an awful yet Divine solitude over which the Infinite broods, watchful yet silent. Why it is brought into conscious being, to live within a material frame and there perform certain duties and labours, and from thence depart again, it cannot tell. All is a mystery,—a strange Necessity, in which it cannot truly recognize its part or place. Yet it is,—and one of the strongest proofs of its separate identity from the body is this "imaginary" love for which it yearns, and which it never obtains. "Imaginary" love is not earthly,—neither is it heavenly,—it is something between both, a vague and inchoate feeling, which, though incapable of being reduced to any sort of reason or logic, is the foundation of perhaps all the greatest art, music and poetry in the world. If we had to do merely with men as they are, and women as they are, Art would perish utterly from the face of the earth. It is because we make for ourselves "ideal" men, "ideal" women, and endow these fair creations with the sentiment of "imaginary" love, that
