_(For the Mirror.)_
True love has no reserves--LANSDOWNE.
There is not an accomplishment in the mind of a female more enchanting,
nor one which adds more dignity and grace to her person, than constancy.
Whatever share of beauty she may be possessed of, whether she may have
the tinge of Hebe on her cheeks, vying in colour with the damask rose,
and breath as fragrant--and the graceful and elegant gait of an
Ariel--still, unless she is endowed with this characteristic of a
virtuous and ingenuous mind, all her personal charms will fade away,
through neglect, like decaying fruit in autumn. The whole list of female
virtues are in their kind essential to the felicity of man; but there is
such beauty and grandeur of sentiment displayed in the exercise of
constancy, that it has been justly esteemed by the dramatic poets as the
chief excellence of their heroines. It nerves the arm of the warrior
when absent from the dear object of his devoted attachment, when he
reflects, that his confidence in her regard was never misplaced; but
yet, amidst the dangers of his profession, he sighs for his abode of
domestic happiness, where the breath of calumny never entered, and where
the wily and lustful seducer, if he dared to put his foot, shrunk back
aghast with shame and confusion, like Satan when he first beheld the
primitive innocence and concord between Adam and Eve in the Garden of
Eden. It adds a zest to the toils of the peasant, and his heart expands
with joy and gratitude when he returns in the evening to his ivy-mantled
cottage, and finds his wife assiduously engaged in the household duties
of his family. And it soothes the mind of the lunatic during the lucid
intervals of the aberration of his intellects, and tends more than
anything else to restore him to reason. In fact, there is no calamity
that is incident to man, but that female constancy will assuage. Whether
in sickness or health, in prosperity or poverty, in mirth or sadness,
(vicissitudes which form the common lot of mankind in their pilgrimage
through this life;) the loveliness of this inestimable blessing will
shine forth, like the sun on a misty morning, and preserve the even
temperature of the mind. To the youthful lover it is the polar star that
guides him from the shoals and quicksands of vice, among which his
wayward fancy and inexperience are too apt to lead him. But in the
matrimonial state, the pleasures arising from the exercise of this
virtue are manifold, as it sheds a galaxy of splendour around the social
hemisphere; for it is such a divine perfection, that Solomon has wisely
observed, that
"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband."
A husband so blessed in marriage, might exclaim with the lover in one of
Terence's comedies, "I protest solemnly that I will never forsake her;
no, not if I was sure to contract the enmity of mankind by this
resolution. Her I made the object of my wishes, and have obtained her;
our dispositions suit; and I will shake hands with them that would sow
dissension betwixt us; for death, and only death, shall take her from
me."
The eulogies of the poets in regard to this amiable trait in the female
character, are sublime and beautiful; but none, I think, have surpassed
in vivid fancy and depth of feeling, that of Lord Byron, in his elegant
poem of the _Corsair_. The following passage describing the grief of
Medora on the departure of Conrad, the pirate, is sketched with the
pencil of a poet who was transcendently gifted with a knowledge of the
inmost recesses of the human heart:--
"And is he gone,"--on sudden solitude
How oft that fearful question will intrude?
"'Twas but an instant past--and here he stood!
And now"--without the portal's porch she rush'd,
And then at length her tears in freedom gush'd;
Big, bright, and fast, unknown to her they fell.
But still her lips refus'd to send--"Farewell!"
"He's gone!"--against her heart that hand is driven,
Convuls'd and quick--then gently rais'd to heav'n;
She look'd and saw the heaving of the main:
The white sail set--she dared not look again;
But turn'd with sickening soul within the gate--
"It is no dream--and I am desolate!"