CONCERNING

Monsieur de la ROCHEFOUCAULT’S Maxim—­"That marriage is sometimes “convenient but never delightful."

IT may be thought a presumptuous attempt in me to controvert a maxim advanced by such a celebrated genius as Monsieur Rochefoucault, and received with such implicit faith by a nation which boasts of superior politeness to the rest of the world, and which, for a long time past, has prescribed the rules of gallantry to all Europe.

NEVERTHELESS, prompted by that ardour which truth inspires, I dare to maintain the contrary, and resolutely insist, that there are some marriages formed by love, which may be delightful, where the affections are sympathetic.  Nature has presented us with pleasures suitable to our species, and we need only to follow her impulse, refined by taste, and exalted by a lively and agreeable imagination, in order to attain the most perfect felicity of which human nature is susceptible.  Ambition, avarice, vanity, when enjoyed in the most exquisite perfection, can yield but trifling and tasteless pleasures, which will be too inconsiderable to affect a mind of delicate sensibility.

WE may consider the gifts of fortune as so many steps necessary to arrive at felicity, which we can never attain, being obliged to set bounds to our desires, and being only gratified with some of her frivolous favours, which are nothing more than the torments of life, when they are considered as the necessary means to acquire or preserve a more exquisite felicity.

THIS felicity consists alone in friendship, founded on mutual esteem, fixed by gratitude, supported by inclination, and animated by the tender solicitudes of love, whom the ancients have admirably described under the appearance of a beautiful infant:  It is pleased with infantine amusements; it is delicate and affectionate, incapable of mischief, delighted with trifles; its pleasures are gentle and innocent.

THEY have given a very different representation of another passion, too gross to be mentioned, but of which alone men, in general, are susceptible.  This they have described under the figure of a satyr, who has more of the brute than of the man in his composition.  By this fabulous animal they have expressed a passion, which is the real foundation of all the fine exploits of modish gallantry, and which only endeavours to glut its appetite with the possession of the object which is most lovely in its estimation:  A passion founded in injustice, supported by deceit, and attended by crimes, remorse, jealousy, and contempt.  Can such an affection be delightful to a virtuous mind?  Nevertheless, such is the delightful attendant on all illicit engagements; gallants are obliged to abandon all those sentiments of honour which are inseparable from a liberal education, and are doomed to live wretchedly in the constant pursuit of what reason condemns, to have all their pleasures embittered by remorse, and to be reduced to the deplorable condition of having renounced virtue, without being able to make vice agreeable.