it would not be voluntarily performed; and, in the absence of affection, compels man in some measure to be just!
What protection against distress, misery, infancy, and old age, would the scheme of Mr. Shelley confer on woman? "Love," says he, "is inevitably consequent on the perception of loveliness." This is not true, in the sense in which love is here employed. Every man does not love every woman in whom he perceives loveliness. It could not even be a consequence of inculcating the idea, that man like the butterfly should pass from flower to flower, and revel in the sweets of every beauty; for nature would mock his powers of enjoyment, by the endless renewals of loveliness and beauty, with which she would deride his sated appetite. But to inculcate this idea would be to sacrifice every sensation, which
"Fills the languid pause with finer joy!"
It would be to brutalize man, and to degrade woman—to fill the earth with such worthless beings as seek all pleasure in mere sensual gratifications; and such females as minister to the pleasure of man without any participation in his gross delights.
The old tale that " love withers under constraint; that its very essence is liberty; that
