Phenix Gazette

FIRST LOVE.
Talk of first love as the world may,
we never experience in a second any
thing half so sweet. The object
beloved a second time may be more
amiable—may be more deserving of affection;
but in the first there is a novelty
of circumstances and feeling--an un-
tasted cup of joy, which in a repeti-
tion falls short of its original flavour.
We are, in a second affection, going
over a path already trodden; in the
first, we explore a new track covered
with wild roses and spontaneous
luxuriances, that diffuse odours, which
lose much of their freshness on being
exhaled. We always know we are
in love a second time, from our form-
er experience. The first time we are
novices, and receive our maiden im-
pressions gilded by brighter hopes
and hallowed by a sanctity that casts
almost a religious holiness over them.
Repetitions of love grow more and
more sensual; it is in youth's first affec-
tion only, that a love like that of angels
is exchanged—ethereal, unsustained.
Lucid with heavenly purity.
First
love is like youth, full of
generous
impulses and exalted feeling.
In successive visitations it becomes
corrupted, as in advancing years we
grow more and more the creatures of
circumstances, interests, and the
world's custom. Youth is infinitely
nearer the optimism contemplated by
moralists and philosophers than man-
hood. "Love," too, it has been ob-
served wisely, "is always nearer allied
to melancholy than to jollity or mirth."
The instances recorded of the purest
and most exalted passion, are among
the sedate temperaments. The soul
that feed upon themselves, that keep
back from the multitude, that cannot
put up with common place, but as-
pire to idealities and creations of their
own—these have generally the earliest.
the most durable, and the deepest im-
pressions from love.