Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/181

Rh she bears with meek endurance, loving on with a deeper and more fervent love; and she is, in most cases, at last rewarded by a union with one from whom such a woman as she is said to be, would shrink in disgust and horror. This union is represented as the high reward of her devotion, and the writer generally has the unblushing effrontery to tell us that she is supremely happy. As well could an angel be happy in the arms of a spirit from the bottomless pit! It is all false! Such things never take place as represented. A woman may love, with the wild passions of an impure heart, a bold, bad man, whose brilliant qualities have dazzled her imagination, and caused it to gloss over his evils and magnify what she is pleased to call his generous qualities; she may be true to him, amid neglect, outrage, and wrong, and she may at last receive her reward, and become his wife. But we can neither admire her fidelity nor rejoice in her reward, for we know that happiness will not result from her marriage, but that her last days will be the most wretched of her life. A right-minded woman—one with a pure heart and a clear head—would rather shrink from than be attracted by such a man.

These pictures, set forth often in the most brilliant and attractive colors, do much to