A young man, who is a pure and good
one, when he starts in life is very apt to fancy all women angels. He
loves and venerates his mother; he believes her better, purer far, than
his father, because his school-days have taught him practically what men
are; but he does not yet know what women are. His sisters are angels
too, and the wife he is about to marry, the best, the purest woman in
the world, also an angel, of course. Marriage soon opens his eyes. It
would be out of the course of nature for every body to secure an angel;
and the young husband finds that he has married a woman of the ordinary
pattern--not a whit better on the whole than man; perhaps worse, because
weaker. The high-flown sentiment is all gone, the romantic ideas fade
down to the light of common day. "The bloom of young desire, the purple
light of love," as Milton writes in one of the most beautiful lines ever
penned, too often pass away as well, and a future of misery is opened up
on the basis of disappointment. After all, the difficulty to be got over
is this--how is mankind to be taught to take a just estimate of things?
Is it possible to put old heads upon young shoulders? Is not youth a
perpetual state of intoxication? Is not every thing better and brighter
far then than in middle life? These are the questions to be solved, and
once solved we shall be happy; we shall have learnt the great lesson,
that whatever is, is ordained by a great and wise power, and that we are
therewith to be content.
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