SEFTON CHURCH.
HERE are very many devices wherewith we delude ourselves—indeed, human life has never seemed to me any thing more than a series of mistakes. It is a mistake to be born—another to live—and a third to die. However, there is one other mistake, more absurd than all the three—and that is marrying—and which is made worse by the fact, that the other three we cannot very well help, but the last we can. I say nothing of your matches of convenience, for I do not understand how any thing in existence can be other than inconvenient; nor of your marriage for money, as money, like patriotism, is an excuse for every thing; but I speak of your love matches. Now, a love match is like that childish toy which consists of various boxes enclosed one within another, and yet contains nothing, after all. I wonder where Experience got its reputation?—it has been very easily obtained—but it does not deserve it: they say, that it teaches fools; it may teach them, but they do not learn. Every year, one sees a young woman in a white gown, and a young man in a blue coat, adventuring on what is called "the happiest day of one’s life;" so called, perhaps, as they are never very particularly happy afterwards. Equally, every year, does one witness couples who, in like manner, begin in blue and white, continuing in green and yellow melancholy: yet no one takes warning by the example; all seem to expect a miracle from fate, in their own favour—what business they have to expect it, I don't know; but we do flatter ourselves strangely. I must, however, do fate the justice to acknowledge its strict impartiality—all are disappointed alike. I hold that, in marriage, love augments the evil: contrast in such cases is an aggravation of ennui; it is so peculiarly provoking, to reflect how much pleasanter you used to be to each other. Hope and Love are the passions of the heart; the difference between them is, that Hope does not come to an end, but Love does. Love has two terminations; it concludes either in profound indifference, or in intense hate. Now, in the general run of human natures, there is not energy enough for hate; therefore, the usual finale is profound indifference; the most insipid state of existence that can be devised. No wonder that the household gods, like the images on a chimney-piece, often get broken. Quarrels are only the refreshing necessities of married life: but for their valuable aid, a whole city, like that in the Arabian Nights, might get up some fine summer morning, and find itself turned into stone. It being the universal, therefore laudable fashion, on the principle of that never sufficiently to be commended concentration of the whole doctrine of expediency, that "whatever is, is right" to destroy all delusions, whether of piety, poetry, or loyalty; and the universal demand being for facts, I hold, that the vain lights thrown round "the temple of Hymen" ought to be put out, as only false meteors luring to the slough of despond, taking the ignis fatuus shapes of white gloves, silver favours, wedding excursions, and wedding cakes. I have seen many young
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