A passionate woman may be likened to a wet candle spitting flame.
TO LOVE.
It is a duty, nay, it is a religion to that power to shew that, though it makes all things—wealth, pleasure, ambition—worthless, yea, noisome for themselves; yet for itself can it produce all efforts, even if only to secure its name from scoffs as the child and parent of slothfulness. Works, therefore, of general profit—works of abstruse thought [will be born of love]; activity, and, above all, virtue and chastity [will come forth from his presence].
The moulting peacock, with only two of his long tail-feathers remaining, and those sadly in tatters, yet, proudly as ever, spreads out his ruined fan in the sun and breeze.
Yesterday I saw seven or eight water-wagtails following a feeding horse in the pasture, fluttering about and hopping close by his hoofs, under his belly, and even so as often to tickle his nostrils with their pert tails. The horse shortens the grass and they get the insects.
Sic accipite, sic credite, ut mereamini intelligere: fides enim debet præcedere intellectum, ut sit intellectus fidei præmium.