John had done speaking, "it is a false
compliment to the objects of our affection, if, for the sake of sparing
them a transient uneasiness, we rob them of the comfort to which they
are entitled, of mitigating our sufferings by partaking it. All
dissimulation is disloyal to love. Besides, it appears to me to be an
introduction to wider evils, and I should fear, both for the woman I
loved and for myself, that if once we allowed ourselves concealment in
one point, where we thought the motive excused us, we might learn to
adopt it in others, where the principle was more evidently wrong."

"Besides," replied Mr. Stanley, "it argues a lamentable ignorance of
human life, to set out with an expectation of health without
interruption, and of happiness without alloy. When young persons marry
with the fairest prospects, they should never forget that infirmity is
inseparably bound up with their very nature, and that in bearing one
another's burdens, they fulfill one of the highest duties of the
union."

CHAPTER XVIII.

After supper, when only the family party were present, the conversation
turned on the unhappy effects of misguided passion. Mrs. Stanley
lamented that novels, with a very few admirable exceptions, had done
infinite mischief, by so completely establishing the omnipotence of
love, that the young reader was almost systematically taught an
unresisting submission to a feeling, because the feeling was commonly
represented as irresistible.

"Young ladies," said Sir John, smiling, "in their blind submission to
this imaginary omnipotence, are apt to be necessarians. When they _fall_
in love, as it is so justly called, they then obey their _fate_; but in
their stout opposition to prudence and duty, they most manfully exert
their _free will_; so that they want nothing but _knowledge absolute_ of
the miseries attendant on an indiscreet attachment, completely to
exemplify the occupation assigned by Milton to a class of beings to whom
it would not be gallant to resemble young ladies."

Mrs. Stanley continued to assert, that ill-placed affection only became
invincible, because its supposed invincibility had been first erected
into a principle. She then adverted to the power of religion in subduing
the passions, that of love among the rest.

I ventured to ask Lucilla, who was sitting next me (a happiness which,
by some means or other, I generally contrived to enjoy), what were her
sentiments on this point? With a lit