Read "Eugene Aram Book IV" by Edward Bulwer-lytton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that, And manage it against despairing thoughts. -- Two Gentlemen of Verona.
If there be any thing thoroughly lovely in the human heart, it is Affection! All that makes hope elevated, or fear generous, belongs to the capacity of loving. For my own part, I do not wonder, in looking over the thousand creeds and sects of men, that so many religionists have traced their theology, -- that so many moralists have wrought their system from -- Love. The errors thus originated have something in them that charms us even while we smile at the theology, or while we neglect the system. What a beautiful fabric would be human nature -- what a divine guide would be human reason -- if Love were indeed the stratum of the one, and the inspiration of the other! What a world of reasonings, not immediately obvious, did the sage of old open to our inquiry, when he said the pathetic was the truest part of the sublime.