The Middlebury Register

Love Rare and True.
FROM COLERIDGE.
Love, truly such, is itself not the most
common thing in the world, and mutual
love still less so. But that enduring personal
attachment, so beautifully delineated
by Erin's sweet melodist, and still
more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-
known ballad, "John Anderson, my Jo.
John," in addition to a depth and constancy
of character of no every-day occurrence,
suppose a peculiar sensibility
and tenderness of nature; a constitutional
communicativeness and utterancy
of heart and soul; a delight in the detail
of sympathy, in the outward and visible
signs of the sacrament within, to
count, as it were, the pulses of the life
of love. But, above all, it supposes a
soul which, even in the pride and summer
tide of life, even in the fulness of health
and strength, had felt oftenest and prized
highest that which age cannot
take away, and which, in all our lovings,
is the love. I mean that willing sense of
the insufficiency of the self for itself,
which predisposes a generous nature to
see in the total being of another, the
supplement and completion of its own;
that quiet perpetual seeking which the
presence of the beloved modulates, not
suspends, where the heart momentarily
finds, and, finding again seeks; lastly,
when "life's changeful orb has passed
the full," a confirmed faith in the nobleness
of humanity, thus brought home
and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom
of hourly experience: it supposes, I
say, a heartfelt reverence for worth not
the less deep because divested of its solemnity
by habit, by familiarity, by mutual
infirmities, and even by a feeling of
modesty which will arise in delicate
minds, when they are conscious of possessing
the same or the correspondent
excellence in their own characters. In
short, there must be a mind which, while
it feels the beautiful and the excellent in
the beloved as its own, and by right of
love appropriates it, can call goodness
its playfellow, and dares not make sport
of time and infirmity: while in the person
of a thousand-foldly endeared partner,
we feel for aged virtue the caressing
fondness that belongs to the innocence
of childhood; and repeat the same
attentions and tender courtesies as had
been dictated by the same affection to
the same object, when attired in feminine
loveliness, or in manly beauty. These
qualities which I have enumerated, are
rarely found united in a single individual
How much more rare must it be, that
two such individuals should meet together
in this wide world, under circumstances
that admit of their union as husband
and wife. A person may be highly
estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as
neighbor, friend, housemate, in short, in
all the concentric circles of attachment,
save only the last and inmost; and yet
from how many causes be estranged from
the highest perfection in this! Pride,
coldness, or fastidiousness of nature,
worldly cares, an anxious or ambitious
disposition, a passion for display, a sullen
temper, one or the other, too often proves
"the dead fly in the ointment of spices,"
and any one is enough to unfit it for the
precious balm of unction. For some
mighty good sort of people, too, there is
not seldom a sort of saturnine, or, if you
will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself alive
by sucking the paws of its own self-importance.
And as this high sense, or
rather sensation of their own value, is
for the most part grounded on negative
qualities, so they have no better means
of preserving the same but by negatives,
that is, by not doing or saying anything
that might be put down for fond, silly, or
nonsensical; or (to use their own phrase,)
by never forgetting themselves, which
some of their acquaintances are charitable
enough to think the most worthless
object they could be employed in remembering.
The same effect is produced in
thousands, by the too general insensibility
to a very important truth; this, namely,
that the misery of human life is made up
of large masses, each separated from
the other by certain intervals. One year,
the death of a child; years after, a failure
in trade; after another longer or
shorter interval, a daughter may have
married unhappily;-in all but the singularly
unfortunate, the integral parts
that compose the sum total of the unhappiness
of a man's life, are easily
counted, and distinctly remembered. The
happiness of life, on the contrary,
is made up of minute fractions, the little
soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile,
a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in
the disguise of playful raillery, and the
like. If what must be, could be once
so, and no more! The wringing of the
heart, that pang of something like despair
which the strong spirit groans under,
weigh us down as if it were to last and
last-but is over in a space that to the
body is less than a single pulse of health.
We are stung and smarted from time to
time by events, that are to the heart
what a blow from a sledge hammer would
be to the body: but from these there is
recovery. Yet, on the other hand, the
painful recollection of slight offenses,
ill-timed or inappropriate expressions,
and the thousand nameless occasions
of regret, arise and swell into a sort of
perpetual murmur, which no effort can
put to rest, and which can be drowned
in no stream of joy. The heart becomes
sick, as with the continual presence of
something wrong, and the mind is haunted
and overshadowed by the idea of something
not only wrong, but irremediable.
The misery of life arises from the
want of a true sympathy between the
spirit and the flesh, and the consequent
conflict between the two. The flesh
craves for that which the spirit knows to
be evil, and the spirit yearns for that
which the flesh cannot comprehend. But
in true love, the spirit and the flesh are
one, and the happiness is perfect.