We'd guess what star should be our home when love
Becomes immortal; while the perfumed light
Stole through the mists of alabaster lamps,
And every air was heavy with the sighs
Of orange-groves, and music from sweet lutes,
And murmurs of low fountains that gush forth
I' the midst of roses!—Dost thou like the picture?"
And how, to any susceptible nature not yet deadened with prosaic conceit, veneered with supercilious knowingness, such a strain as this, livingly expressed on the stage, would reveal the superiority of faith and affection to the grinding strifes of material rivalry, and open that celestial world of the ideal wherein the pauper may be a millionaire, the drudge an emperor!
"Pauline, by pride angels have fallen ere thy time: by pride—
That sole alloy of thy most lovely mould—