"I believe implicitly in your religion," said I; "but believing so much, I am compelled to believe a little more. If beauty calls up this homage of the imagination, and inspires these pure and elevating aspirations, it must awaken the emotions of the heart. To feel and appreciate beauty truly, therefore, is, in other words, to love."
"That is an old fallacy. If love were indispensable to the appreciation of beauty, it would cruelly narrow the pleasures of the imagination."
"On the contrary," I replied, "I believe them to be inseparable."
"You are talking riddles," she replied, as if she were getting tired of the subject; "but, true or false, I have no reliance upon the word love, or the use that is made of it. It means any thing or nothing."
"Then you must allow me to explain myself;" and so I set about my explanation without exactly knowing what it was I had to explain. "I spoke of love as an abstract emotion." She smiled very discouragingly at that phrase, and I was, therefore, bound to defend it. "Certainly there is such a thing—listen to me for a moment. I was not speaking of the love of this or that particular object—a love that may grow up and then die to the root; but the love which may be described as the poetical perception and permanent enjoyment of the ideal."
"We must not quarrel about the word," interrupted Astræa, as if she wished to bring the conversation to a close; "we agree, possibly, in the thing, although I should have expressed it differently."
"I grant," said I, trying to gather my own meaning more clearly, "love must have an object. Abstractions may occupy the reason, but do not touch the heart. When beauty appeals to the heart it must take a definite shape, and the love it inspires must be addressed to that object alone."
"We have changed our argument," observed Astræa, quickly, "and see, we must change our seats, too, for supper is announced."
I felt that I was rhapsodizing, and that, if I had gone on much further, I must have uttered a great deal that Astræa would have inevitably set down as rank nonsense. I was not sorry, therefore, that the conversation was broken off at that dubious point. We were both scared out of our subtleties by the flutter and laughter that rang through the room as every body rose to go to supper; and in a few moments I found myself seated at table with Astræa next to me, and my friend the dwarf seated exactly opposite.
III.