"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame!"
And will this holy state of the spirit endure? No—it will fade, and fade, and fade away, so imperceptibly, so unconsciously (so like the shortening of the long summer-days, that lose minute after minute of the light, till again we hear the yellow leaves rustling in autumnal twilight), that the heart within that snow-drifted bosom will know not how great has been the change, till at last it shall be told the truth, and know that all mortal emotion, however paradisiacal, is born to die.
Fain would we believe that forebodings like these are, on all such occasions, whispered by a blind and ignorant misanthropy, and that of wedded life it may generally be said,
"O, happy state, where souls together draw,
Where love is liberty, and nature law!"
What profound powers of affection, grief, pity, sympathy, delight, and religion belong, by its constitution, to the frame of every human soul! And if the courses of life have not greatly thwarted the divine dispensations of nature, will they not all rise into genial play within bosoms consecrated to each other's happiness, till comes between them the cold hand of death? It would seem that everything fair and good must flourish under that holy necessity—everything foul and bad fade away; and that no quarrel or unkindness could ever be between pilgrims travelling together through time to eternity, whether their path lead through an Eden or a waste. Habit itself comes with humble hearts to be gracious and benign; they who have once loved, will not, for that very reason, cease to love; memory shall brighten when hope decays; and if the present be not now so blissful, so thrilling, so steeped in rapture as it was in the golden prime, yet shall it without repining suffice to them whose thoughts borrow unconsciously sweet comforts from the past and future, and have been taught by mutual cares and sorrows to indulge tempered expectations of the best earthly felicity. And is it not so? How much tranquillity and contentment in human homes! Calm onflowings of life shaded in domestic privacy, and seen but at times coming out into the open light! What brave patience under poverty! What beautiful resignation in grief! Riches take wings to themselves and flee away—yet without and within the door there is the decency of a changed, not an unhappy lot—The clouds of adversity darken men's characters even as if they were the shadows of dishonour, but conscience quails not in the gloom—The well out of which humility hath her daily drink, is nearly dried up to the very spring, but she upbraideth not Heaven—Children, those flowers that make the hovel's earthen floor delightful as the glades of Paradise, wither in a day, but there is holy comfort in the mother's tears; nor are the groans of the father altogether without relief—for they have gone whither they came, and are blooming now in the bowers of heaven.
Reverse the picture—and tremble for the fate of those whom God hath made one, and whom no one man must put asunder. In common natures, what hot and sensual passions, whose gratification ends in indifference, disgust, loathing, or hatred! What a power of misery, from fretting to madness, lies in that mean but mighty word—Temper! The face, to whose meek beauty smiles seemed native during the days of virgin love, shows now but a sneer, a scowl, a frown, or a glare of scorn. The shape of those features is still fine—the eye of the gazelle—the Grecian nose and forehead—the ivory teeth, so small and regular—and thin line of ruby lips breathing Circassian luxury—the snow-drifts of the bosom still heave there—a lovelier waist Apollo never encircled stepping from the chariot of the sun—nor limbs more graceful did ever Diana veil beneath the shadows of Mount Latmos. But she is a fiend—a devil incarnate, and the sovereign beauty of three counties has made your house a hell.
But suppose that you have had the sense and sagacity to marry a homely wife—or one comely at the best—nay, even that you have sought to secure your peace by admitted ugliness—or wedded a woman whom all tongues call—plain; then may an insurance-ticket, indeed, flame like the sun in miniature on the front of your house—but what Joint-Stock Company can undertake to repay the loss incurred by the perpetual singeing of the smouldering flames of strife, that blaze up without warning at bed and board, and keep you in an everlasting alarm of fire? We defy you to utter the most glaring truth that shall not be instantly contradicted. The most rational proposals for a day or hour of pleasure, at home or abroad, are on the nail negatived as absurd. If you dine at home every day for a month, she wonders why nobody asks you out, and fears you take no trouble to make yourself agreeable. If you dine from home one day in a month, then are you charged with being addicted to tavern-clubs. Children are perpetual bones of contention—there is hatred and sorrow in house-bills—rent and taxes are productive of endless grievances; and although education be an excellent thing—indeed quite a fortune in itself—especially to a poor Scotsman going to England, where all the people are barbarous—yet is it irritatingly expensive when a great Northern Nursery sends out its hordes, and gawky hoydens and hobbletehoys are getting themselves accomplished in the foreign languages, music, drawing, geography, the use of the globes, and the dumb-bells.
"Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
(two bad lines, by the way, though written by Dr Johnson)—and observation will find the literature of all countries filled with sarcasms against the marriage-life. Our old Scottish songs and ballads especially, delight in representing it as a state of ludicrous misery and discomfort. There is little or no talk of horns—the dilemma of English wit; but every individual moment of every individual minute, of every individual hour of every individual day, and so on, has its peculiar, appropriate, characteristic, and incurable wretchedness. Yet the delightful thing is, that in spite of all this jeering and gibing, and grinning and hissing, and pointing with the finger—marrying and giving in marriage, births and christenings, continue their career of prosperity; and the legitimate population doubles itself somewhere about every thirty-five years. Single houses rise out of the earth—double houses become villages—villages towns—towns cities—and our Metropolis is itself a world!
While the lyrical poetry of Scotland is thus rife with reproach against wedlock, it is equally rife with panegyric on the tender passion that leads into its toils. In one page you shudder in a cold sweat over the mean miseries of the poor "gudeman;" in the next you see, unconscious of the same approaching destiny, the enamoured youth lying on his Mary's bosom beneath the milk-white thorn. The pastoral pipe is tuned under a fate that hurries on all living creatures to love; and not one lawful embrace is shunned from any other fears than those which of themselves spring up in the poor man's thoughtful heart. The wicked betray, and the weak fall—bitter tears are shed at midnight from eyes once bright as the day—fair faces never smile again, and many a hut has its broken heart—hope comes and goes, finally vanquishing, or yielding to despair—crowned passion dies the sated death, or, with increase of appetite, grows by what it feeds on—wide, but unseen, over all the regions of the land, are cheated hopes, vain desires, gnawing jealousy, dispirited fear, and swarthy-souled revenge—beseechings, seductions, suicides, and insanities—and all, all spring from the root of Love; yet all the nations of the earth call the Tree blest, and long as time endures, will continue to flock thither panting to devour the fruitage, of which every other golden globe is poison and death.