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LOVE.

Or all the passions, which derive additional force from scenery, none experiences a greater accession than LovE;--that noble feeling of the heart, which Plato calls " an interposition of the Gods in behalf of the young: " A passion celebrated by all, yet truly felt by few. "Dost thou know, what the nightingale said to me?" says a Persian poet; "what sort of a man art thou, that canst be ignorant of love?" Rather would I enquire, "what sort of a man art thou, that canst be capable of love?" Since, though of all the passions it is the most productive of delight, it is the most unfrequent of them all. How many of us feel the passions of hatred and revenge, of envy and desire, every day! But how few of us are capable of feeling an ardent affection, or of conceiving an elevated passion ! That was not love, which Mahomet felt for Irene; Titus for Berenice; Catullus for Lesbia; or Horace for Lydia and though Anacreon is never weary of boasting his love, the gay, the frantic Anacreon never felt a wound. Homer, however, was sensible of all the delicacy of affection; and he paints the difference, alluded to, in the examples of Helen and Paris; and Hector and Andromache; while he makes even the savage Achilles alive to the purity of honourable passion:

The wife, whom choice and passion do approve,

Sure every wise and worthy man will love!

Euripides, too,-the poet of the heart,-declares, that love would of itself induce us to adore a deity, even in a country, peopled by atheists. But the Greeks, generally speaking, were almost as much strangers to legitimate love, as the barbarians, they affected to despise. The passion of Sappho was nothing but an ungovernable fever of desire; though the fragment, she has left, has been so long, so often, and so widely celebrated, that the world imagines she was the essence of

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love! As a poem it has been unjustly celebrated; (1 ì may venture to differ from so celebrated a critic as Longinus ;) because it has been celebrated, far beyond its merits and even as a faithful picture of desire, it has nothing to compare with a poem of Jayadeva. "The palms of her hands support her aching temples, pale as the crescent rising at eve. Heri! Heri!' thus she meditates on thy name, as if she were gratified; and she were dying through thy absence. She rends her locks; she pants; she laments inarticulately; she trembles; she pines; she moves from place to place; she closes her eyes: she rises again; she faints! In such a fever of love, she may live, oh! celestial physician, if thou administer the remedy; but shouldst thou be unkind, her malady will be desperate."

Heron has preserved an Indian song, translated by a Catabà Indian, who had acquired the English language at Williamsburg, more simple; but far more affecting to the mind and heart. "I was walking in the shade of a grove in the morning dew. I met my fancy. She talked with her smiling lips I gave her no answer. She bade me speak out my mind : Bashful face spoils good intent.' That cheered my heart. But my love is gone from my side, then my heart faints, and is

to me.

when low."

Terence paints affection in the scene between Pamphilus and Glycera-and when Phædria is taking leave of his mistress, how natural are his exhortations. "Love me by day and by night; but when you are in the society of that soldier, seem as if you were absent. Dream of me; expect me; think of me; hope for me; take delight in remembering me ; let me always be in your imagination; and let me reign in your soul, as you reign in mine.a". The picture of Jayadeva,

a. It is astonishing, that not only Longinus, but Addison and Du Bos, have fallen into this illegitimate enthusiasm. One would really suppose, that none of them could, by any implication, have known the occasion on which this celebrated ode was written!

"Cum milite isto præsens, absens ut sies;

Dies noctesque me ames, &c.-Eun. act i. sc. 2.

it is true, is drawn with force and with all the wild irregularity of the passion itself; but what has desire to do with the passion of love?—that mild and elegant affection, which sinks the deepest where it shows itself the least: that curiosa felicitas of the heart, which can animate only the wise, the elegant, and the virtuous. Read the ode of Sappho, and the fragment of Jayadeva, my Lelius, again and again, and tell me if you are half so agreeably attracted to their merits, as to those of the following beautiful indication of elevated attachment? The feeling, which this exquisite morceau expresses, must be felt by every woman, who aspires to the passion of love, or the name of love is prostituted, and its character libelled.

Go, youth belov'd, in distant glades

New friends, new hopes, new joys, to find;
Yet sometimes deign, 'mid fairer maids,
To think on her thou leav'st behind.
Thy love, thy fate, dear youth, to share,
Must never be my happy lot;

But thou may'st grant this humble pray'r,
Forget me not-forget me not.

Yet should the thought of my distress
Too painful to thy feelings be,
Heed not the wish I now express,
Nor ever deign to think on me.
Yet, oh! if grief thy steps attend;
If want, if sickness, be thy lot;
And thou require a soothing friend :

Forget me not-forget me not.—Mrs. Opie.

Animated with an affection like this, the earth with all its inconveniences, is a paradise; even when toiling through the parched deserts of Lybia, the solitudes of the Ohio, or the frozen wastes of Lapland a.

I love the memory of Mr. Pitt on many accounts. He was an unfortunate statesman, it is true; but he had a lofty elo

a “Sic amor contorquet caput nostrum," says a Lapland poet, “ mutat cogitationes et sententias. Puerorum voluntas, voluntas venti; juvenum cogitationes, longa cogitationes.”—Schefferi Lapponica, cap. xxv.

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"He is." "Is he re

quence, capacious views, and a noble mind. Sir Walter Farquhar calling one day, the premier observed him to be unusually ruffled. "What is the matter?" exclaimed the patient. "Why, to tell you the truth," replied Sir Walter, "I am extremely angry with my daughter. She has permitted herself to form an attachment for a young gentleman, by no means qualified, in point of rank or fortune, to be my son-in-law." "Now let me say one word in the young lady's behalf," returned the minister. "Is the young man, you mention, of a respectable family?" spectable in himself?" "He is.' and education of a gentleman?" estimable character ?" "He has." Sir Walter, hesitate no longer. You and I are well acquainted with the delusions of life. Let your daughter follow her own inclinations, since they appear to be virtuous. You have had more opportunities, than I have, of knowing the value of affection, and ought to respect it. Let the union take place; and I will not be unmindful that I had the honour of recommending it." The physician followed the direction of his patient; the lovers were united; and the patronage of the minister testified his satisfaction.

"Has he the manners "He has." "Has he an

"Why, then, my dear

Though Horace seems to have known but little of this passion, the Romans in general seem to have enjoyed a much higher opinion of it. Hence deities were appointed to guard affection in many of its stages. One tied the nuptial bands; a second conducted the bride to her house; a third kept her from gadding; a fourth preserved an unity of soul; and a fifth took charge of reconciling the parties, when any difference accidentally occurred.

Chesterfield calls women "toys;" Montesquieu said, they were found to delight by personal charms: but Cato declared to the senators, in a debate on the Appian law, that if they made women their equals, they would soon be their superiors."

a

Spirit of Laws, b. xlv. c. 2.

b Livy, lib. xxxiv. c. 2.

Hippocrates, Sophocles, Plautus and St. Chrysostom, have borne testimony to the dishonour of women. Weak men, in

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their turn, signalize their vanity and their heroism in the endeavour to degrade them: they call them the "weak sex ; the "frivolous sex;" the "sensitive sex;' the "bad sex.

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If you were men, as men you are in show,

You would not use the gentle ladies so.

Midsummer Night's Dream, act iii. sc. 2.

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Some, following the example of Adam in his anger, style them "the fair defect of Nature:" while the Talmud of Babylon insinuates, that the great Power, foreseeing the evils women would bring upon men, refused to make Eve, till Adam had repeatedly requested him; fearful that men should consider the making of women an act of malice! Augustine, however, esteemed them "the pious sex :”

a gentler star

His lovelier search illumin'd.

See women in what country you will, with few exceptions, we find, that travellers give the same account of their virtues ; from Ledyard to Golownin'. The pedant, the coxcomb, and the man of the world, affect to despise women: so do those, who are conscious, that women despise them. But the man of pure sentiments, and of unaffected consciousness of his own strength, prides himself in his companion: while the man of misfortune, hailing women by the endearing name of the "good sex," compares them to Aurora and Thetis, asking arms for Memnon and Achilles.

"He is truly free," says Rousseau, "who, to accomplish his happiness, wants not the assistance of a second person." Fortunately for the moral of this argument, a man, so constituted, not only does not exist, but cannot exist. It is the wild vision of an imagination, teeming with enthusiasm, and producing in

a Vide Shipwreck of the Oswego, p. 117. 145. 210. 225.
b Captivity in Japan, vol. i. p. 103, 104.

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