“To love, and feel ourselves beloved,”
is said to constitute the height of human happiness. This sacred sentiment, which some have debased by the term passion, when unrequited and irregulated, produces the most baneful influence upon the system.
“A youthful passion, which is conceived and cherished without any certain object, may be compared to a shell thrown from a mortar by night: it rises calmly in a brilliant track, and seems to mix, and even to dwell for a moment with the stars of heaven; but at length it falls—it bursts—consuming and destroying all around, even as itself expires.”[26]
From the constitution of woman, from the peculiar position which she of necessity holds in society, we should, à priori, have concluded that in her we should see manifested this sentiment in all its purity and strength. Such is the fact. A woman’s life is said to be but the history of her affections. It is the soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the life blood along her veins, “blending with every atom of her frame.” Separated from the bustle of active life—isolated like a sweet and rare exotic flower from the world, it is natural to expect that the mind should dwell with earnestness upon that which is to constitute almost its very being, and apart from which it has no existence.
“Alas! the love of woman, it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing;
For all of theirs upon that die is thrown;
And if ’tis lost, life hath no more to bring
To them, but mockeries of the past alone.”
Byron.