Page:Female Portrait Gallery.pdf/75

Rh "Curious fool, be still, Is human love the growth of human will?"

A woman's lover is always the idol of her imagination; he is far more indebted to her for good qualities than his vanity would like to acknowledge. Rochefoucauld says, "L'amour cessé des qu'on voit l’objet comme il est." But if the illusion has its own sorrow, the cure is bitterer still, "as charm by charm unwinds." I believe that more women are disappointed in marriage than men; a woman gives the whole of her heart—the man only gives the remains of his, and very often there is only a little left. Besides his idol is rarely so much the work of his own hands as her's; at the end of the first year she may ask, where are the picturesque and ennobling qualities with which she invested her lover? in nine cases out of ten echo will indeed answer "where." Why an unhappy passion is often so lasting is that it never encounters that "Ithuriel of the common-place," Reality. I like to think of Rebecca amid the olive groves of Granada. Care for her father's old age, kindliness to the poor and the suffering, and the workings of a mind strong in endurance, would bring tranquillity if not happiness, till the hand might be pressed to the subdued heart without crying "peace, peace, where is no peace!"