BEING IN LOVE.

THERE are a great many mistakes about Love. Some people think it is one thing, and some another:

"A temple to Friendship,' said Laura, enchanted,

'I'll build in this garden; the thought is divine.'
Her temple was built, and she only now wanted
An image of Friendship to place on the shrine.
She flew to a sculptor, who set down before her
A Friendship the fairest his art could invent;
But so cold, and so dull, that the youthful adorer
Saw plainly this was not the idol she meant,"

This is one mistake. But did Moore's Laura want something in addition to Friendship, or did she want something totally different? "L'amitié est l'amour sans ailes." Is that true; so that, if we add wings to Friendship, we get Love for the product?

In the days when Godwin, declining, as became a republican, the prefix of Mister, was a sage much sought, a lady visito, of the sniffy, love-in-the-aibstract type, asked him for an oracle upon the great subject of subjects. "William Godwin," said she, suddenly, "what is your opinion of love?" Godwin was too absorbed in meditation to answer the question, and continued solemnly puffing his pipe. "William Godwin," said the determined woman, once more, "what is your opinion of love?" And still Godwin smoked, and kept silence. Not liking to see a woman snubbed, even in appearance, Shelley, then a young fellow also in attendance on the cracle, hazarded a jest. "I think," said he, "love acts upon the heart like a nutmeg-grater; it wears it away." Again the undaunted woman put her question. Sniffing at poor Shelley, who was then nobody, she, with raised voice, said, "William Godwin, what is your opinion of love?" Roused at last, the oracle responded: "My opinion agrees with that of Mr. Shelley," said he, and relapsed into his thoughts and his pipe.

This was a case in which the oracle snubbed the votarist because the votarist was unworthy. Godvin would no more tell a sniffy woman what he hought about love than the Lady in "Comus" would expound to Circe "the sublime notion and high mystery that must be uttered to unfold the sage and serious doctrine of virginity." It is pretty certain that Godwin himself knew nothing about it; or he would never have (for example) published, aft her death, his wife's old letters to the heartless fathe.. of "our little barrier-girl." But perhs the majority of living men and women think tha love is like a nutmeg-grater; that most of us must, in the natural course of things, get our hearts grated; but that," when we find the process agreeable, nature has got us in a trap, and the sooner we are out of it the better. At the same time, there is always what Mr. Bain, with such innocent surprise, calls a "heated atmosphere" around the subject, and there is a luminous haze of superstition about love overhanging all the literature of imagination. It is true you now