Marriages that are made up at watering-places are mostly of this running sort; and there may be reason to think that they are even less likely to lead to—I will not say happiness, but to a very humble degree of contentment,—than those which are a plain business of bargain and sale; for into these latter a certain degree of prudence enters on both sides. But there is a distinction to be made here: the man who is married for mere worldly motives, without a spark of affection on the woman's part, may nevertheless get, in every worldly sense of the word, a good wife; and while English women continue to be what, thank Heaven they are, he is likely to do so: but when a woman is married for the sake of her fortune, the case is altered, and the chances are five hundred to one that she marries a villain, or at best a scoundrel.
Falling in love, and running in love are both, as every body knows, common enough; and yet less so than what I shall call catching love. Where the love itself is imprudent, that is to say where there is some just prudential cause or impediment why the two parties should not be joined together in holy matrimony, there is generally some degree of culpable imprudence in catching it, because the danger is always to be apprehended, and may in most cases be avoided. But sometimes the circumstances may be such as leave no room for censure, even when there may be most cause for compassion; and under such circumstances our friend, though the remembrance of the Burgemeester's daughter was too vivid in his imagination for him ever to run in love, or at that time deliberately to walk into it, as he afterwards did,—under such circumstances I say, he took a severe affection of this kind. The story is a melancholy one, and I shall relate not it in this place.
The rarest, and surely the happiest marriages are between those who have grown in love. Take the description of such a love in its rise and progress, ye thousands and tens of thousands who have what is called a taste for poetry,—take it in the sweet words of one of the sweetest and tenderest of English Poets; and if ye doubt upon the strength of my opinion whether Daniel deserves such praise, ask Leigh Hunt, or the Laureate, or Wordsworth, or Charles Lamb.
Ah! I remember well (and how can I
But evermore remember well) when first
Our flame began, when scarce we knew what was
The flame we felt; when as we sat and sighed
And looked upon each other, and conceived
Not what we ailed,—yet something we did ail;
And yet were well, and yet we were not well,
And what was our disease we could not tell.
Then would we kiss, then sigh, then look: and thus
In that first garden of our simpleness
We spent our childhood. But when years began
To reap the fruit of knowledge, ah how then
Would she with graver looks, with sweet stern brow,
Check my presumption and my forwardness;
Yet still would give me flowers, still would me show
What she would have me, yet not have me know.
Take also the passage that presently follows this; it alludes to a game which has long been obsolete,—but some fair reader I doubt not will remember the lines when she dances next.
And when in sport with other company
Of nymphs and shepherds we have met abroad,
How would she steal a look, and watch mine eye
Which way it went? And when at Barley-break
It came unto my turn to rescue her,
With what an earnest, swift and nimble pace
Would her affection make her feet to run,
And further run than to my hand! her race
Had no stop but my bosom, where no end.
And when we were to break again, how late
And loth her trembling hand would part with mine;
And with how slow a pace would she set forth
To meet the encountering party who contends
To attain her, scarce affording him her fingers' ends!1
1 HYMEN'S TRIUMPH.
CHAPTER LIV. P. I.
MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND MARRIAGE, AND MARRIAGE WITHOUT LOVE.