Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine!  Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Archflamen of Hymen!  Immortal Go-between! who and what manner of person art thou?  Art thou but a name, typifying the restless principle which impels poor humans to seek perfection in union? or wert thou indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves?  Mysterious personage! like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar; not Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril; nor the consigner of undipt infants to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate; nor he who hated all mothers, Origen; nor Bishop Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift.  Thou comest attended with thousands and ten thousands of little Loves, and the air is

  Brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings.

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors; and instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne before thee.

In other words, this is the day on which those charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each other at every street and turning.  The weary and all forspent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own.  It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and bell-wires.  In these little visual interpretations, no emblem is so common as the heart,—­that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears,—­the bestuck and bleeding heart; it is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations than an opera hat.  What authority we have in history or mythology for placing the head-quarters and metropolis of God Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not very clear; but we have got it, and it will serve as well as any other.  Else we might easily imagine, upon some other system which might have prevailed for any thing which our pathology knows to the contrary, a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of feeling, “Madam, my liver and fortune are entirely at your disposal;” or putting a delicate question, “Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow?” But custom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortunate neighbours wait at animal and anatomical distance.

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.  It “gives a very echo to the throne where Hope is seated.”  But its issues seldom answer to this oracle within.  It is so seldom that just the person we want to see comes.  But of all the clamorous visitations the welcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a Valentine.  As the raven himself was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance of Duncan,