never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted."

The opinion under consideration is egregiously erroneous. Woe to her who
abandons the helm of judgment, in forming that connection, which is to
decide her whole fortune for life. Ill-fated must she be, who concludes
that the head and heart must be divorced, before she can experience
that sentiment, which binds human souls in the sacred tie of marriage.

Another believes love to be an Illusion. She thinks it a subject fit
only for the fevered imagination of the poet, or for tales of fiction
and romance. With the realities of life it has no concern. In this
plain, matter-of-fact, working-day world, there is no room, she thinks,
for this creature of the brain. Therefore does she determine to fortify
herself against its approaches. Others may pursue the phantom, if they
will, but she is resolved to be never so cheated, as to "fall in love"
with a man.

The enthusiast may subject herself to severe disappointments, and may
find ultimately that the husband she loved and married, under the sway
of the blind god, falls far short of that mysteriously exalted being she
deemed herself connected with for life. But far more to be deplored is
her fate, who entered the matrimonial state with the Stoical faith that
love was all an "illusion." What sympathy can those, thus joined, but
not wedded, feel in the season of sorrow? How little will they share, or
even imagine, those joys which spring up between hearts that have been
pledged, exchanged, and cemented.

There are those, who regard love as of necessity a mere Impulse; a thing
not subject in any wise to human control, but fitful, an outbreaker, a
tyrant. They can govern other emotions and sentiments. Anger, envy,
jealousy, resentment, pride, they believe capable of being moderated, if
not wholly suppressed. But love is lawless. Its mandates must be obeyed,
and that instantly; they may not be opposed, no, not even questioned.

Who has not seen some young woman of talent and virtue sacrifice herself
to this mistaken impression? The plume of the soldier, the gay air of
the debauchee, the flippant beau, the half-insane tippler, could she not
have seen her doom in being affianced to one of these poor pageants of
humanity? Ah, but "she loved; she could not help loving;" she gave
herself a victim at the profane shrine, because she always thought she
must love where and whom, her unbidden, irresponsible, feelings should
direct her