Well, Monkton, I have been to E-----; that important event in my monastic
life has been concluded. Lady Margaret was as talkative as usual; and a
Mrs. Dalton, who, I find, is an acquaintance of yours, asked very
tenderly after your poodle and yourself. But Lady Emily! Ay, Monkton,
I know not well how to describe her to you. Her beauty interests not
less than it dazzles. There is that deep and eloquent softness in her
every word and action, which, of all charms, is the most dangerous. Yet
she is rather of a playful than of the melancholy and pensive nature
which generally accompanies such gentleness of manner; but there is no
levity in her character; nor is that playfulness of spirit ever carried
into the exhilaration of what we call "mirth." She seems, if I may use
the antithesis, at once too feeling to be gay, and too innocent to be
sad. I remember having frequently met her husband. Cold and pompous,
without anything to interest the imagination, or engage the affections,
I am not able to conceive a person less congenial to his beautiful and
romantic wife. But she must have been exceedingly young when she married
him; and she, probably, knows not yet that she is to be pitied, because
she has not yet learned that she can love.
Le veggio in fronte amor come in suo seggio
Sul crin, negli occhi--su le labra amore
Sol d'intorno al suo cuore amor non veggio.
I have been twice to her house since my first admission there. I love to
listen to that soft and enchanting voice, and to escape from the gloom of
my own reflections to the brightness, yet simplicity, of hers. In my
earlier days this comfort would have been attended with danger; but we
grow callous from the excess of feeling. We cannot re-illumine ashes!
I can gaze upon her dream-like beauty, and not experience a single desire
which can sully the purity of my worship. I listen to her voice when it
melts in endearment over her birds, her flowers, or, in a deeper
devotion, over her child; but my heart does not thrill at the tenderness
of the sound. I touch her hand, and the pulses of my own are as calm as
before. Satiety of the past is our best safeguard from the temptations
of the future; and the perils of youth are over when it has acquired that
dulness and apathy of affection which should belong only to the
insensibility of age.
Such were Falkland's opinions at the time he wrote. Ah! what is so
delusive as our affections? Our security is our danger--our defiance our
defeat! Day after day he went to E-------. He passed the mornings in
making excursions with Emily over that wild and romantic country by which
they were surrounded; and in the dangerous but delicious stillness of the
summer twilights, they listened to the first whispers of their hearts.
In his relationship to Lady Margaret, Falkland found his excuse for the
frequency of his visits: and even Mrs. Dalton was so charmed with the
fascination of his manner, that (in spite of her previous dislike) she
forgot to inquire how far his intimacy at E------ was at variance with
the proprieties of the world she worshipped, or in what proportion it was
connected with herself.
It is needless for me to trace through all its windings the formation of
that affection, the subsequent records of which I am about to relate.
What is so unearthly, so beautiful, as the first birth of a woman's
love? The air of heaven is not purer in its wanderings--its sunshine not
more holy in its warmth. Oh! why should it deteriorate in its nature,
even while it increases in its degree? Why should the step which
prints, sully also the snow? How often, when Falkland met that
guiltless yet thrilling eye, which revealed to him those internal
secrets that Emily was yet awhile too happy to discover; when, like a
fountain among flowers, the goodness of her heart flowed over the
softness of her manner to those around her, and the benevolence of her
actions to those beneath; how often he turned away with a veneration too
deep for the selfishness of human passion, and a tenderness too sacred
for its desires! It was in this temper (the earliest and the most
fruitless prognostic of real love) that the following letter was
written.