It were fitting that the nature of this affection, which has such power for good or ill, be thoroughly understood, and endeavors made to guide it in right channels. For love, as it is of the first enjoyment, so it is frequently of the deepest distress. If it is placed upon an unworthy object, and the discovery is made too late, the heart can never know peace. Every hour increases the torments of reflection, and hope, that soothes the severest ills, is here turned into deep despair. But, strange to say, though it is one of universal and engrossing interest to humanity, the moralist avoids it, the educator shuns it, and parents taboo it. It is considered almost indelicate to refer to love as between the sexes, and young persons are left to gather their only notions of it from the impossible love stories that fill the shelves of circulating libraries. This strong and absorbing feeling, which nature has for wise purposes made so strong in woman that it colors her whole life and history, though it may form but an episode in the life of man, is usually left to follow its own inclination, and to grow up for the most part unchecked, without any guidance or direction whatever.
Although nature spurns all formal rules and directions in affairs of love; though love triumphs over reason, resists all persuasion, and scorns every dictate of philosophy; and though, like a fabled tree or plant, it may be cut down at night, but ere morning it will be found to have sprouted up again in renewed freshness and beauty, with its leaves and branches re-expanded to the air and laden with blossoms and fruits; still, at all events, it were best to instill in young minds such views of character as should enable them to discriminate between the true and the false, and to accustom them to hold in esteem those qualities of moral purity and integrity without which life is but a scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its name.
Genuine love is founded on esteem and respect. You can not long love one for whom you have not these feelings. The most beautiful may be the most admired and caressed, but they are not always the most esteemed and loved. We discover great beauty in those who are not beautiful, if they possess genuine truthfulness, simplicity, and sincerity. No deformity is present where vanity and affectation is absent, and we are unconscious of the want of charms in those who have the power of fascinating us by something more real and permanent than external attractions and transitory shows.
Remember that love is dependent upon forms; courtesy of etiquette must guard and protect courtesy of heart. How many hearts have been lost irrecoverably and how many averted eyes and cold looks have been gained from what seemed, perhaps, but a trifling negligence of forms. Love is a tender plant and can not bear cold neglect. It requires kind acts and thoughtful attentions, one to the other, and thrives at its best only when surrounded by an atmosphere of disinterested courtesy.
The love of woman is a stronger power and a sweeter thing than that of man. Men and women can not be judged by the same rules. There are many radical differences in their affectional natures. Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the great world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the interval of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune, for space in the world's thoughts, and dominion over his fellow-men. But a woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her nature seeks for love and kindness. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection, and if shipwrecked her case is hopeless, for it is the bankruptcy of a heart.
Woman's love is stronger than man's because she sacrifices more. For every woman is with the food of the heart as with the food of her body; it is possible to exist on a very small quantity, but this small quantity is an absolute necessity. The love of a pure, true woman has brightened some of the darkest scenes in the world's history. It inspires them with courage and incites them to actions utterly foreign to their shrinking dispositions. Who can estimate the value of a woman's affections? Gold can not purchase a gem so precious. In our most cheerless moments, when disappointments and care crowd round the heart, and even the gaunt form of poverty menaces with his skeleton fingers, it gleams round the soul like sunlight in dark places. It follows the prisoner into the gloomy cell, and in the silence of midnight it plays around his heart, and in his dreams he folds to his bosom the form of her who loves him still, though the world has turned coldly from him.
Love purifies the heart from self; it strengthens and ennobles the character, gives higher motives and a nobler aim to every action of life, and makes both man and woman strong, noble, and courageous; and the power to love truly and devotedly is the noblest gift with which a human being can be endowed, but it is a sacred fire and not to be burned before idols. Disinterested love is beautiful and noble. How high will it not rise! How many injuries will it not forgive! What obstacles will it not overcome, and what sacrifices will it not make rather than give up the being upon which it has been once wholly and truthfully fixed!
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know it has begun. A thousand messengers betray it to the eye. Tone, act, attitude, and look, the signals upon the countenance, the electric telegraph of touch, all betray the yielding citadel. And there is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings, the first rising sound of that wind which is so soon to sweep through the soul to purify or to destroy. Love is thus a power, potent for good, but, debased and corrupted, is as potent for evil. If it brings joys it may also conduce to exquisite anguish. A disappointment in love is more hard to get over than any other; the passion itself so softens and subdues the heart that it disables it from struggling or bearing up against the woes and distresses which befall it. The mind meets with other misfortune in her whole strength; she stands collected within herself and sustains the shock with all the force which is natural to her. But a heart crossed in love has its foundation sapped, and immediately sinks under the weight of accidents that are disagreeable to its favorite passion.
When time brings us to the resting-places of life—and we all expect them, and, in some measure, attain them—when we pause to consider its ways and to study its import, we then look back over the waste ground which we have left behind us. Is a bright spot to be seen there? It is where the star of love has shed its beams. Is there a plant, a flower, or any beautiful thing visible? It is where the smiles and tears of affection have been spent—where some fond eye met our own, some endearing heart was clasped to ours. Take these away and what joy has memory in retrospection, or what delight has hope in future prospects? The bosom which does not feel love is cold; the mind which does not conceive it is dull; the philosophy which does not accept it is false; and the only true religion in the world has pure, reciprocal, and undying love for its basis. The loves that make memory happy and home beautiful are those which form the sunlight of our earlier years; they beam gratefully along the pathway of our mature years, and their radiance lingers till the shadows of death darken them all together.
