场景——一间宽敞的客厅，毗邻一间音乐室。凯瑟琳。歌词是什么?伊莉莎。问问我们的朋友，即兴剧团;他来了。凯特要请你帮个忙，先生;是你会重复那首歌谣[相信我，如果所有那些可爱的年轻的魅力。——EHC吗?____先生唱得如此甜美。朋友 It is in Moore's Irish Melodies ; but I do not recollect the words distinctly. The moral of them, however, I take to be this :-- Love would remain the same if true, When we were neither young nor new ; Yea, and in all within the will that came, By the same proofs would show itself the same. Eliza. What are the lines you repeated from Beaumont and Fletcher, which my mother admired so much ? It begins with something about two vines so close that their tendrils intermingle. Friend. You mean Charles' speech to Angelina, in The Elder Brother. We'll live together, like two neighbour vines, Circling our souls and loves in one another ! We'll spring together, and we'll bear one fruit ; One joy shall make us smile, and one grief mourn ; One age go with us, and one hour of death Shall close our eyes, and one grave make us happy. Katharine. A precious boon, that would go far to reconcile one to old age--this love--if true ! But is there any such true love ? Friend. I hope so. Katharine. But do you believe it ? Eliza (eagerly). I am sure he does. Friend. From a man turned of fifty, Katharine, I imagine, expects a less confident answer. Katharine. A more sincere one, perhaps. Friend. Even though he should have obtained the nick-name of Improvisatore, by perpetrating charades and extempore verses at Christmas times ? Eliza. Nay, but be serious. Friend. Serious ! Doubtless. A grave personage of my years giving a Love-lecture to two young ladies, cannot well be otherwise. The difficulty, I suspect, would be for them to remain so. It will be asked whether I am not the `elderly gentleman' who sate `despairing beside a clear stream', with a willow for his wig-block. Eliza. Say another word, and we will call it downright affectation. Katharine. No ! we will be affronted, drop a courtesy, and ask pardon for our presumption in expecting that Mr. ___ would waste his sense on two insignificant girls. Friend. Well, well, I will be serious. Hem ! Now then commences the discourse ; Mr. Moore's song being the text. Love, as distinguished from Friendship, on the one hand, and from the passion that too often usurps its name, on the other-- Lucius (Eliza's brother, who had just joined the trio, in a whisper to the Friend). But is not Love the union of both ? Friend (aside to Lucius). He never loved who thinks so. Eliza. Brother, we don't want you. There ! Mrs. H. cannot arrange the flower vase without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hartman. Lucius. I'll have my revenge ! I know what I will say ! Eliza. Off ! Off ! Now, dear Sir,--Love, you were saying-- Friend. Hush ! Preaching, you mean, Eliza. Eliza (impatiently). Pshaw ! Friend. Well then, I was saying that Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world : and that mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, `John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature ; a constitutional communicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul ; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within--to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. 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 ;---- Eliza. There is something here (pointing to her heart) that seems to understand you, but wants the word that would make it understand itself. Katharine. I, too, seem to feel what you mean. Interpret the feeling for us. Friend. ---- I mean that willing sense of the insufficingness 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 pass'd the full', a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus bro