merely as destructive of social enjoyment, that the
habits of the great world are unfriendly to happiness. It is not
the place for those who have warm imaginations and tender hearts.
There is scarcely any circumstance in which that sphere differs
more from others, than in the deficiency of strong affections.
The chances are many against their existence; and if a woman be
born to move in the haunts of the worldly, it were almost cruel
to snatch her from that immersion in their follies which may
serve to stifle the pangs of disappointed affection. For after
all that can be said of the misery of its empty pursuits and
corrupted tastes, the disappointments that end its petty
passions, and the mortifications that cling to its apparent
splendours, sorrows like those bear no comparison with tears of
anguish shed by the grave of love. Surrounding pleasures, even
the tranquil and elevating beauty of external nature, seem but a
mockery when offered in place of the one thing needful--perfect
and overflowing affection. The exterior decorum and attention on
the part of an altered husband, which betrays to the world no
dereliction of morals but what its easy code passes over as a
right, is no substitute for love. Not unfrequently there is
something almost appalling in the sense of solitude, which on
occasions of sickness or retirement oppresses a young woman, who
to all appearance is overwhelmed with attendance. The hand is not
there that would render every other superfluous. A voice is
wanting, whose absence leaves the silence and horror of death.
The eyes are missed, whose glances first called forth the fervour
of her affections from their peaceful sleep; or, if looking on
her for a moment, they express nothing but indifference. These
are the occasions that dispel the laboured illusion, wherewith,
under the garb of business, or cares, or natural manner, she had
sought to disguise from herself the marks of an estranged heart.
In these sad and desolate hours her memory retraces her early
years, her mother's tender watchfulness, and the soft voices of
sisters contending for their place by her bedside. The contrast
with her present stately solitude bursts resistless through every
effort to repel it; and life and youth, with their long futurity,
present her with nothing but a frightful chasm."