But, above all, it
supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life, even in
the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest
that which age cannot take away, and which in all our lovings is _the_
love; I mean, that willing sense of the unsufficingness of the self for
itself, which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the total being of
another, the supplement and completion of its own; that quiet perpetual
seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends,
where the heart momently finds, and, finding again, seeks on; lastly, when
'life's changeful orb has passed the full,' a confirmed faith in the
nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the
very bosom of hourly experience; it supposes, I say, a heartfelt reverence
for worth, not the less deep because divested of its solemnity by habit, by
familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of modesty which
will arise in delicate minds, when they are conscious of possessing the
same, or the correspondent, excellence in their own characters. In short,
there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful and the excellent
in the beloved as its own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call
goodness its playfellow; and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while,
in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged
virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the innocence of childhood,
and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies which had been
dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine
loveliness or in manly beauty.
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