Your letter reminds me of what a French married lady here said to me on this very subject: I was exclaiming violently against convents; and particularly urging, what I thought unanswerable, the extreme hardship of one circumstance; that, however unhappy the state was found on trial, there was no retreat; that it was for life.
Madame De —— turned quick, “And is not marriage for life?”
“True, Madam; and, what is worse, without a year of probation. I confess the force of your argument.”
I have never dared since to mention convents before Madame De ——.
Between you and I, Lucy, it is a little unreasonable that people will come together entirely upon sordid principles, and then wonder they are not happy: in delicate minds, love is seldom the consequence of marriage.
It is not absolutely certain that a marriage of which love is the foundation will be happy; but it is infallible, I believe, that no other can be so to souls capable of tenderness.
Half the world, you will please to observe, have no souls; at least none but of the vegetable and animal kinds: to this species of beings, love and sentiment are entirely unnecessary; they were made to travel through life in a state of mind neither quite awake nor asleep; and it is perfectly equal to them in what company they take the journey.
You and I, my dear, are something awakened; therefore it is necessary we should love where we marry, and for this reason: our souls, being of the active kind, can never be totally at rest; therefore, if we were not to love our husbands, we should be in dreadful danger of loving somebody else.
For my part, whatever tall maiden aunts and cousins may say of the indecency of a young woman’s distinguishing one man from another, and of love coming after marriage; I think marrying, in that expectation, on sober prudent principles, a man one dislikes, the most deliberate and shameful degree of vice of which the human mind is capable.
I cannot help observing here, that the great aim of modern education seems to be, to eradicate the best impulses of the human heart, love, friendship, compassion, benevolence; to destroy the social, and encrease the selfish principle. Parents wisely attempt to root out those affections which should only be directed to proper objects, and which heaven gave us as the means of happiness; not considering that the success of such an attempt is doubtful; and that, if they succeed, they take from life all its sweetness, and reduce it to a dull unactive round of tasteless days, scarcely raised above vegetation.