Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/243

232 bewilder the judgment, so as to conceal from detection the emptiness within. It is the constitutional want of woman's nature to have some superior being to look up to; and how shall a man of weak capacity supply this want? He may possibly please for an hour, or a day, but it is a fearful thought to have to dwell with such a one for life.

The most important inquiry, however, to be made in the commencement of an attachment, for it may be too late to make it afterwards, is, whether the object of it inspires with a greater love of all that is truly excellent—in short, whether his society and conversation have a direct tendency to make religion appear more lovely, and more desirable. If not, he can be no safe companion for the intimacy of married life; for you must have already discovered, that your own position as a Christian, requires support rather than opposition. It is the more important, therefore, that this inquiry should be most satisfactorily answered in an early stage of the attachment; because it is the peculiar nature of love to invest with ideal excellence the object of its choice, so that after it has once obtained possession of the heart, there ceases too generally to be a correct perception of good and evil, where the interests of love are concerned.

In addition to this tendency, it is deeply to be regretted, that so few opportunities are afforded to women in the present state of society, of becoming acquainted with the natural dispositions and general habits of those to whom they intrust their happiness, until the position of both is fixed, and fixed for life. The short acquaintance which takes place under ordinary circumstances, between two individuals about to be thus united, for better for worse, until death do them part, is anything but a mutual development of real character. The very name of courtship is a repulsive one; because it implies merely a solicitude to obtain favour, but has no reference to deserving it. When a man is said to