Urbana Union

The custom of kissing was much reprobated by the Roundheads and all the Puritan party. Hear what good old John Bunyan says against it; and surely his words might have been quoted as full of sense and justice, as in such times as the old-fashioned canvassing for elections, when all the pretty women were kissed—or even now, when under the mistletoe, the poor ones are not kissed:

The common salutation of women I abhor; it is odious to me whosoever I see it. When I have seen good men salute those women that they have visited and that have visited them, I have made my objections against it; and when they have answered that it was but a piece of civility, I have told them that it was not a comely sight. Some, indeed, have urged the holy kiss; but then I have asked them why they have made baulks, why they did salute the most handsome and let the ill-favored ones go?

Why, indeed? That is just what the Mormons, more generous than Bunyan's friends, do not do; they make no baulks of even the ill-favored.

Beautiful and sad are many of the kisses scattered about literature and history. There was the kiss of the Troubadour Gauffre Rudel, Prince of Blaye, who fell in love with the Countess of Tripoli only by report, and pined away so sorely for love and yearning that his spirit went from him, and his life was dead within him. He took ship and sailed over the waves to see her; and she, touched by his devotion, went down into the ship as it lay in the bay of Tripoli with Gauffre nigh unto death on board. As she went to him, and took his hand, and kissed him, the poet's love leapt up into its flame; he gave her one last look, blessed her, and then died—with her lips upon his. The lady went into a convent.

Then there was the precious kiss which Margarida, wife of Raymond de Roussillon, gave her lover, the Troubadour Guillem de Cabestanh, when "she stretched out her arms and sweetly embraced him in the love chamber." Ah! that kiss was dearly bought! for Raymond, coming to the knowledge of all its meaning, gave Margarida her lover's heart to eat, disguised as a savory morsel. When he told her what she had done, she, saying that "if he had eaten so sweet a morsel, she would eat nothing more," dashed herself from the window into the castle yard; and so died in great pain—but more happily than if she had lived.

And there was Francesca's kiss, so sweet and yet so sad, so guilty and so pure, when "trembling all over," Paolo kissed her—and they read no more that day.

And there was the kiss which Marie Stuart gave the sleeping poet, Alain Chartier, and before all the court, too; and that other kiss—or rather many kisses—given by Marguerite de Valois to Clement Marot, of which this poet makes such tender, boastful account, prefiguring Leigh Hunt's assertion, that,

Stolen sweets are always sweeter;
Stolen kisses much completer.

One of the strangest kisses on record is that (which I firmly believe in) told in the Arabian Nights, when the lady of Bagdad, who goes to purchase a rich stuff, is asked for only a kiss in return. No money will buy it; nothing but a kiss on her fair cheek. So, holding her veil that the passers by may see nothing, she offers her cheek to the young merchant's kiss; and the wretch bites it savagely through instead. But all the Arabian Nights' kisses are as strange and fetterless as the emotions they express. We, in this colder North, can hardly understand the state of mind and manners detailed therein.