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Complete 3 Volumes
THE affections of the human heart are various; all equally genuine, when nature is untampered with, but infinitely modified as to their intensity. The love of a parent for its offspring has been acknowledged on all hands to be one of the strongest and least uncertain of these affections, partaking so largely of instinct, as fairly to class it among the immutable laws of nature, and though certainly shared by the beasts which perish, yet felt to be venerable from the divinity of the origin whence the common well-spring rises. There is a modification, however, of this parental love, which is wholly free from, and undegraded by any community either with the beasts of the field, the fishes of the sea, the reptiles which crawl upon the earth, or the birds which fly towards the heavens--there is a parental love, so purely spiritual, so wholly intellectual, as to place it in sublimity far above any other affection of the human heart.
"What may this be?" demand the uninitiated. Unhappy ones! Like a childless wife, and a husband without an heir, ye are unconscious of the fondest yearning that ever swelled a human breast! But is there an author who does not at once secretly acknowledge his sympathy in the feeling thus described? Oh no! Not one.
Yet, elevated as is the nature of this intellectual love, there be many who are shy to confess it. Many, strange to say, who affect a total indifference, nay, almost oblivion, concerning those offsprings of the brain, for whom by every law, human and divine, they ought to feel the tenderest partiality. "Let no such men be trusted "--it is doing them injustice to believe that they can be sincere.
Far otherwise is it with the progenitor of the Widow Barnaby. I scruple not to confess that with all her faults, and she has some, I love her dearly: I owe her many mirthful moments, and the deeper pleasure still of believing that she has brought mirthful moments to others also. Honestly avowing this to be the case, can any one wonder, can anyone blame me, for feeling an affectionate longing at my heart to follow her upon the expedition upon which I sent her when last we parted? An expedition, too, that was to lead her to a land which all the world knows I cherish in my memory with peculiar delight? I will not believe it, but trusting to the long-established, and good-humoured toleration of those who descend to listen to my gossipings, I will forthwith proceed to tell them all that has happened to this dear excellent lady since General Hubert and Mr. Stephenson left her in her grand drawing-room in Curzon street, surrounded by her family and friends.
