With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats
The leaves of the spring's sweetest book, the rose.
MIDDLETON.

IT is a common practice with those who have outlived the
susceptibility of early feeling, or have been brought up in the
gay heartlessness of dissipated life, to laugh at all love
stories, and to treat the tales of romantic passion as mere
fictions of novelists and poets. My observations on human nature
have induced me to think otherwise. They have convinced me that,
however the surface of the character may be chilled and frozen by
the cares of the world, or cultivated into mere smiles by the
arts of society, still there are dormant fires lurking in the
depths of the coldest bosom, which, when once enkindled, become
impetuous, and are sometimes desolating in their effects. Indeed,
I am a true believer in the blind deity, and go to the full
extent of his doctrines. Shall I confess it?--I believe in broken
hearts, and the possibility of dying of disappointed love! I do
not, however, consider it a malady often fatal to my own sex; but
I firmly believe that it withers down many a lovely woman into an
early grave.

Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads
him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but
the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the
intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune for space
in the world's thought, and dominion over his fellow-men. But a
woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is
her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire--it is
there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her