IV.
Manly Love.
And shall pride yield at length!
----Pride!—and what has love to do with pride? Let us see how it is.
Madge is poor; she is humble. You are rich; you are a man of the world; you are met respectfully by the veterans of fashion; you have gained perhaps a kind of brilliancy of position.
Would it then be a condescension to love Madge? Dare you ask yourself such a question? Do you not know—in spite of your worldliness—that the man or the woman, who condescends to love, never loves in earnest?
But again Madge is possessed of a purity, a delicacy, and a dignity that lift her far above you,—that make you feel your weakness and your unworthiness; and it is the deep and the mortifying sense of this unworthiness that makes you bolster yourself upon your pride. You know that you do yourself honor in loving such grace and goodness; you know that you would be honored tenfold more than you deserve in being loved by so much grace and goodness.
It scarce seems to you possible; it is a joy too great to be hoped for; and in the doubt of its attainment your old, worldly vanity comes in, and tells you to—beware; and to live on in the splendor of your dissipation and in the lusts of your selfish habit. Yet still underneath all there is a deep, low, heart-voice,—quickened from above,—which assures you that you are capable of better things; that you are not wholly lost; that a mine of unstarted tenderness still lies smouldering in your soul.
And with this sense quickening your better nature, you venture the wealth of your whole heart-life upon the hope that now blazes on your path.