Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/180

172 satisfied that only for her wealth, connections, beauty, accomplishments, or personal attractions, and not for something within her which is loved independent of these, her hand is sought in marriage, she should reject the overture at no matter what cost of feeling to herself; for this will be a slight thing indeed, compared to the suffering which such a marriage might entail upon her. All these are unstable attractions; but qualities of mind are enduring, and grow brighter and increase in power with the lapse of years. And besides, what woman of right feeling would think of accepting a man who did not love her, but was only induced to offer his heartless hand in marriage, in order that he might gain something from the union more desirable to his sordid feelings than the devotion of a pure and loving heart?

In many of the high-wrought and unnatural fictions of the day, which are the offspring of perverted and impure minds, or of such as are really ignorant of what love is in its essence and true activity, we often find an innocent and pure-minded woman represented as loving, with a devotion little less than idolatry, a man whose heart teems with evil passions, and whose life is little else than one act after another of vice, brutality, and crime. All his neglect, outrage, and passion,