ver," said he, "been able to
coincide with the views which for now nearly half a century have become
a general fashion. I call them a fashion, because, though I too have
been young in my time, I could never convince myself that they were
founded in nature. Is it possible to deny that some men are liable at
times to passionate moods and excesses? We have but too frequently been
forced to perceive the evil consequences of anger, drunkenness,
jealousy, and rage. So it cannot be denied that a variety of mischief
and strange catastrophes have sprung from those exaggerated feelings to
which we give the name of love. The only question is as to the
absurdity of which men are guilty when they avoid all other
distractions, and seek to wean themselves from their subjection to
sudden impulses of passion, while nevertheless for some time past it
has become a common boast, and has been considered even as necessary to
life, to have experienced love, and its wild moods and passionate
distractions."

The stranger looked at his host seriously and nodded assent, thereupon
the old gentleman proceeded with a raised voice:

"Should one after all be disposed to make some degree of concession,
and admit that there is something natural in the moods of these lovers,
in which, as they tell us, the whole world appears to them in a more
beautiful light, and they are conscious of their powers being
heightened and multiplied (though in general during that waking dream
they are sluggish and incapable of labour), what, I ask, avails all
this, supposing it even to take the happiest turn, towards concluding a
rational good marriage? I would never give my consent were I to have
the misfortune to observe this sort of infatuation in my daughter."

Sophia smiled; young Dietrich looked at her with a blush, and Eulenboeck
kept drinking with great satisfaction, while the stranger gravely
listened to the old man, who, sure of his point, went on with so much
the more zeal: "No; happy the man who, a total stranger to this
preposterous passion, conceives the rational resolution of entering
into the wedded state; and blest the maid who decorously finds a
husband without having ever acted with him those scenes of frenzy; for
then results that content, that quiet, and blessedness, which was not
unknown to our forefathers, but which the modern world thinks beneath
its notice. In those marriages, which were contracted after rational
deliberation in humility and quiet