At times he realizes the fable of Orpheus; he draws the very trees after him, melts the hearts of stone that are around him, and makes them forgive the wrongs which he has done—then his reason seems to be dethroned, the very demon of malice enters his heart; his shafts of calumny transfix alike friend and foe, and he traverses seas and continents almost like the deluded victim of knight errantry, impelled by a spirit which urges forward with irresistible impetuosity, whilst it seems to have lost its destination. The world stands amazed whilst this brilliant meteor is playing above the horizon. One ascribes his course to the waywardness of nature, and calls him a lusus naturæ; another traces his character to the diseases of the body; another tells you he was ambitious, and that all his schemes of promotion and self-aggrandizement were wrecked.
But go to him who has shared his confidence, and nursed him in the hours of his misfortune—to him who can best tell you his history, and he will tell you his was a heart with feelings as intense and pure, as ever were given to the heart of man; he will tell you that that heart poured forth the mighty stream of its affections upon another, and that his love, great as it was, was returned by that being,—when the spoiler came, and then came mystery, converting the very affections of the heart into the scorpions of the furies, and the garden of Eden into a place of torment, which deranged his faculties and destroyed the equilibrium of his mind; and that thus all those fitful moods which puzzle the world, may be traced back to disappointed love.
The effects which I have been describing as flowing from disappointed love, are certainly of an extreme character, happening only in the case of ardent temperaments, combined with a concurrence of circumstances which generate intense and all absorbing affection for the beloved object. In these cases, when all hope is entirely eradicated, there is certainly a tendency to peevishness, fretfulness, whim, suspicion and misanthropy; and against these consequences the individual ought always to be on his guard. He should not charge to the human race, or even to the whole sex, the vices which he thinks he sees in a single individual. This is a case in which kind friends, especially females, may do much to soothe and tranquillize the mind. Women alone seem to have enough of that deep discernment, nice tact, and generous sympathy, which can administer consolation to a wounded heart and calm the irritated feelings of blasted hope. In the great majority of cases however, the disappointed lover plunges into the business and scenes of active life, forms new associations and attachments, and quickly forgets his former love, without any permanent effect being produced on the character by mere disappointment. Man (says Dr. Cogan on the passions) rarely runs any serious risk from disappointment in love. "If he have not speedy recourse to the pistol or the rope, he will probably survive the agonies under which the softer sex will gradually pine and die."
I will now examine briefly, a few of the effects produced on the character of the male, during the period of courtship in society, organized as it is in this country and Europe,—and certainly one of the most marked effects, is the strengthening of vanity and the weakening of pride. As it is the province of man to woo and to win, his constant aim must be to render himself agreeable to the object of his affections. To gain her esteem, her approbation, her love, is the object of all his efforts. Now this is vanity. The proudest heart, the soul of sternest stuff, by the operation of this all subduing passion of love, is made to yield—to become a candidate for the praise of her whose affections he so much covets. In this condition we are all more or less like Petrarch, who declared that "she (Laura) was the motive and object of all his studies—that he coveted glory only as it might secure her esteem—that she alone had taught him to desire life, and to lift his thoughts towards heaven." In his "Conversations with St. Augustin," he even confesses that he was more ardent in his desire for the Laurel Crown, on account of its affinity to the name of Laura. Now, although this vanity seeks the approbation directly of but one, yet as she is regulated by the opinion of the world, we quickly find it necessary to gain the good opinion and esteem of those around us, in order, by their means, to win the approbation of the object of our affections. Hence, however proud the man, love and courtship will in the civilized countries of our globe soon infuse a degree of vanity, which will temper his overweening pride and make him more social, more loquacious, more attentive to all the little courtesies of life, and much more cheerful than he was before. In all the Mahommedan countries, where woman is bought and locked up, and the alternately sweet and painful solicitudes of love and courtship are never known—how proud, how taciturn, how forbidding, unsocial and grave, is the character of man! In France, where the influence of women is very great, how entirely opposite is his character; there, vanity is his predominant trait. Montesquieu, in his "Lettres Persannes," makes Usbeck say to Ibben, in a letter from Paris, on the characters of the French and Persians, "It must be allowed that the seraglio is better adapted for health than for pleasure. It is a dull uniform kind of life, where every thing turns upon subjection and duty; their very pleasures are grave, and their pastimes solemn; and they seldom taste them but as so many tokens of authority and dependence. The men in Persia are not so gay as the French; there is not that freedom of mind and that appearance of content which I meet with here in persons of all ranks and estates. It is still worse in Turkey, where there are families, in which from father to son, not one of them ever laughed from the foundation of the monarchy." Now these proud, taciturn, grave beings would at once be changed, by giving full freedom to the females, and rendering it necessary for each one to woo, to interest and to delight her whom he would make his wife.
In fact, we have never learned so well to know the unappreciable, the priceless value of a woman's heart, as when we have experienced the pains and the pleasures, the doubts and hopes, pertaining to the period of courtship. There have been instances of husbands losing all affection for their wives in the quietude of their possession, but who were suddenly roused to the most tormenting love, as soon as they saw that their cold and brutal indifference had destroyed that affection which they once possessed. Mrs. Jameson, in her very interesting description of the beauties of Charles 2d, tells us that Lady Chesterfield, the daughter of the Duke of Ormond, when first married to Lord Chesterfield, received from him in return for her own pure, warm and innocent affection, a negligent and frigid indifference, which astonished, pained and humiliated her. Finding however that all her tenderness was lavished in vain, mingled pique and disgust succeeded to her first affection and admiration: and in this condition she was suddenly taken by her husband to the Court of Charles the 2d, where, from a neglected wife, living in privacy and even in poverty, she suddenly became a reigning beauty. Lord Chesterfield, when he found his charming wife universally admired, was one of the first to sigh for her; and his passion rose to such a height, that casting aside the fear of ridicule, he endeavored to convince her by the most public attentions, that his feelings towards her were entirely changed. And let the result be a warning to all negligent husbands.—"Unfortunately," says Mrs. J., "it was now too late: the heart he had wounded, chilled and rejected, either could not, or would not be recalled; he found himself slighted in his turn, and treated with the most provoking and the most determined coldness."
The author of the "Journal of a Nobleman at the Congress of Vienna," has given us a still more interesting and striking illustration of the assertion which I have made, in the case of the Count and Countess of Pletenburg, whom he saw in the gay circles of Vienna during the period of the session of the Holy Alliance in that city. Pletenburg had married, without much courtship or difficulty, a young and beautiful woman, for the purpose of securing a fortune which had been left to him, on the condition that he married before he was twenty-five. He soon plunged into every kind of debauchery and dissipation, conceived the greatest disgust for his lovely and loving wife of sixteen—left her almost broken hearted, for the purpose of travelling in Europe, returned after some years, saw her, and saw that she had ceased to love him: then he loved in turn, and loved most violently and hopelessly. He is thus described by the author of the Journal just mentioned, who met with him at a party of the Countess Freck's in Vienna. "The poor man has become an object of ridicule by the servility of his devotion; always sighing, as at the age of eighteen, and, as jealous as a sexagenarian, he never moves from her side. He is ever taking up her gloves and her handkerchief, and pressing them to his bosom in public. But all this tends only to increase the aversion he has raised. Proscribed from the nuptial bed which he had so long disdained, he complains of this rigor in prose, and laments his fate in verse. In short, his enthusiasm has become so great, that if it continues for any length of time, his intellect must become affected by it." And thus is it that the disenthralment of woman will always cause her to be more respected and loved, and by her influence on man she will be sure to make him more agreeable, more social, less proud.
Besides this, virtuous love has a tendency to improve the morals of man, to increase his sympathies and call into play all his most tender feelings. This moral tendency of love in the male, arises partly from imitation of the virtues and character of her whom we love; but mostly from that exquisite, indescribable pleasure, which one in love feels, from the performance of those acts of kindness and virtue which excite the gratitude and esteem of the lady beloved. In this case his minute, tender and ever anticipating attentions to the female, have an effect on man similar to that which I have described as being produced on woman by the relation of mother and child.
| "How oft the thrillings of transported joy Have stolen on the heart, with life's warm tide, When she has deigned with approbating smile To pay the effort of the wish to please! How oft with sorrow's keen corroding pang We've seen displeasure cloud her beauteous face! As when the sun, obscured, would teach the world The value of his genial noontide smile." |
I know of nothing so well calculated to soften the heart, to smooth down the asperities of character, to excite all the kindly, sympathetic and amiable feelings of our nature, as ardent affection for a virtuous and pious female. Mr. Randolph in his letters to a relation, has spoken with great force and propriety of this effect of virtuous love.
So far, I have been describing the nature of man's love, and the effects which it produces on his character. The love of woman however, is much more interesting, and if not more ardent, it is perhaps more devoted, more tender and more constant than that of man. "Man," says Irving, "is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the bustle and struggle of the world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals 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 the history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire—it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. 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 a bankruptcy of the heart." Madame de Stael tells us that love is but an episode in the history of man's life, but it is the serious business of a woman's. And a man, says Thomas, is more to a woman than a whole nation. Under these circumstances, when a woman's affections have been won, when, casting aside all passions, feelings, joys of earth, save for one alone, she settles down,