LIVELY AND PURE AFFECTION. 183 
always preserves its delicious perfumes, and 
continually labours to shed its foreign costume, 
and renew its native attire. For though the 
hand of the gardener can double and triple, 
and variegate its dress, it cannot render its 
acquired qualities permanent. Thus nature has 
deposited in our hearts the germs of the most 
excellent sentiments. Art and society culti- 
vate and deyelope these, embellishing, enfee- 
bling, or exalting them. A variety of causes 
uniting are able to render their effects incon- 
stant and changeable; but, in spite of the 
caprices, errors, and incomprehensible sports of 
the human heart, nature always brings back 
affection to its primitive simplicity. La Roche- 
foucauld has said that, “True love is like the 
apparition of spirits; all the world speaks of it, 
but few have seen it.” What does the gloomy 
moralist mean by true love? Would he per- 
suade us that it is a chimera? Ah! no! we 
find 
True love’s the gift which God has given 
To man alone beneath the heaven. 
It is the secret sympathy, 
The silver chord, the silken tie, 
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind, 
In body and in soul can bind. scorr, 



