resemble me, but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought
to appeal to something in common, and unburthen my inmost soul to
them, I have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant
and savage land.  The more opportunities they have afforded me for
experience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and
to a greater distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn.
With a spirit ill fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble
through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy and have
found only repulse and disappointment. 

Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards
all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we
find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void,
and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we
experience within ourselves.  If we reason, we would be understood;
if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were
born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's
nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes
should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of
motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with