DEARLY love a cheerful optimist 

 a man who can fix his gaze on a will- 

 o'-the-wisp, or glow-worm in the 

 blackest midnight, and persuade him- 

 self and others that it is high noon- 

 that the world is "dark with excess of bright." 

 Sure 't is better to laugh than to be sighing- 

 Democritus is preferable to Heraclitus jt It is 

 more pleasant to seek and commend virtue than 

 to hurl anathemas at vice. Why, it may well be 

 asked, should a man gaze into a cesspool when he 

 may look at the stars ? 



Marius and Cosette may dream away an hundred 

 sensuous summer nights hidden in the boskage, 

 satisfied with their own fond imaginings ; but rob 

 them of the halo of romance, destroy the airy pal- 

 ace in which they live and love, and there 's 

 naught left but a solfatara of lust. Romance is not 

 alone the corolla of love ; it is the very incense of 

 virtue. So long as it envelops man & woman, they 

 wander far above the crass animalism of the world. 



W. C. B R A N N 



