and there is not a vestige in them of the modern feeling of love....

There is nothing there, as in all the love-poetry since the Christian era, of a soul which, because it loves, begs another soul to love it back again; nothing there of a blue and shining lake, which begs a stream to pour itself into its bosom, that both together they may mirror the stars of heaven; nothing there of a pair of ring-doves, opening their wings together, that they may both together fly to the same nest._'[16] Such is the account the hero gives of the nature of his love for woman.
Nor does he give this account regretfully, or think that it shows him to be in any diseased condition.

It shows rather a return, on his part, to a health that others have lost.

As he looks round upon the modern world and the purity that George Eliot says in her verses she would die for, '_Woman_,' he exclaims mournfully, '_is become the symbol of moral and physical beauty.

The real fall of man was on the birthday of the babe of Bethlehem_.'[17] It will be instructive to notice further that these views are carried out by him to their full legitimate consequences, even though this, to some degree, is against his will.