Washington telegraph., 1851-04-02
From Leigh Hunts Journal.
MARRIED AND BACHELOR LIFE


MARRIED AND BACHELOR LIFE.
Marriage, when followed in obedience
80 natural laws, comes in the very thresh-
old Of lives, when every floating atom
and every minutest particle is greedily
smoked in by the hungry soul, to be ab-
.orhed unscrupulously, and faithfully to
no employed in building mp the compile
,ed character Marriage has powerful
influence on death; but death has no ~
Auence on marriage. For as we marry
or do not as we marry wisely or fooIlsh-
~ so is the developed man. We have
seen the mos. eminent men tossed about
like feathers by the winds OF marriage;
calm hopeful, wretched, despalring, Ill
tempered, pronigates. Purposeless' aban-
d,ned as the great more-than-death went
i'll or well with them. Drydon married
unhappily, and how much of the venom
ons st,nu of his satire, how much OF his
nnpoe,ic coarse depreciation of women,
has its origin therein. Addison shared
his fate. and we know that the married
Addison did by no means equal the bach
eIor Spectator, Pope RETAINED from mat
r,monv, his physique. indeed. was not
calculated for wlning hearts and may
ye not imagine that the "divine little ar
list" might have produced something be-
voud the sphere of art, had successful
love and domestic comfort warmed his
heart and so ripend the Rape OF the
Lack into a higher creation that the
nlucind. Swift also avoided marriage
Wherefore, no man shall know; avoid
I'd it with his heart vibrating between
S,el,a aud a Vanessa, and descended,
very questionable moral man, through
morbid old age. to cheerless tomb
leaving his character as an inexplicable
enigma to all times. Nay, in our days,
have we not seen Lord Byron struggling
his ferry course, without repoSe. without
definite purpose, through maze of con-
trsdiction, wrath, and proaigacy. TO an
awful Nowhither. A man who married
most unhappily, whose heart was cauter-
ized by the loss OF the only woman he.
nerhaps. ever truly loved. His writings.
his actions, tel us that in his deepest
abandonment of vice, the ghost OF his
first and ourest love rose ever and anon
before him, to troWn q clear reproof upon
his wayward career. Bnt even the loss
of Mary Chaworth might have been mil
lifted, had his marriage ended well. 1t
cid not; and the unwise marriage magni-
fed and prolonged the urwise life, and
prepared the early death. Surely the
time when heart pants FOR heart, and the
music of isolated spirits ought to blend
iself with other isolated ones IN divine
accord; when we love aud are conquer
ors: when we love and are vanqulshed
when we marry with insight and fore
sight; when we marry blindly, in the
dark, at hap-hazard, and so take into our
beings very core nntrimeEt or poison
forever; surely this is a crisis in the life
of man. grand, terrible and tragic as. and
in great affinity with, that other crisis
when the mcorings are loosened. and we
sail forth upon the unknown seas.
But, in another aspect, marriage may
be associated with death. Marriage is a
change of existence-a death-birth, as
our German friends would say. An Ex-
odus-a transit from one life to another
and with as i.npenetrable veil of doubt
and uncertainty spread over that other
life to whose domains death Is the portal.
Where we are, we know, may man
about to be married we'll exclaim; where
We have been, we also know; whittier
we are going, no man knoweih, nor can
know, till the going has merged into the
gone Charles V. said, no man could be
4 l. ! h. Lol
ed candle with his fingers; a gentleman
who had been semi -petrified in some
continental cold water establishment,
considered that the greatest test of cour-
age was to go naked under a mountain
torrent, converted into d0Nche, on a
winters morning; but my idea is. that no
mans courage can be so severely tested
as by entering into the holy state of mat
rlmony; provided, always, that the man
be of contemplative, reflective nature,
and not mere dweller III the moment
that now is. This courage is more re-
CURED on the woman's part than on the
mans. She must infallibly know less of
her ever as in the world she moves in;
whereas he, when he leaves her. mingles
and is lost in the crowd of outer life.
Whether he keeps himself apart among
the virtuous, or has his haunts among
the vicious. she can only hear by report.
ana report is not a witness that should be
trusted, even on oath; and female eti-
que,te denies her the searching inquiries
necessary for complete satisfaction.
Then, again, he has more resources than
she. If the home be made unhappy by the
lll-assorted union. The tavern, the the
a're, the meeting, the mart are all open
to him. He can be away from home
when he likes, aud as long as he likes;
and when from home, to all intents and