most flagrant of all crimes: a definition which
shall leave out the element of time, and call these
actions the same—equally hateful, equally
diabolical, equally censured by the righteous government
of Heaven—which proceed from the same motives,
and lead to the same result, whether they be done
in a moment, or spread out through a series of years.
Habitual unkindness is demoralizing as well as cruel.
Whenever it fails to break the heart, it hardens it.
To take a familiar illustration: a wife who is
never addressed by her husband in tones of kindness,
must cease to love him if she wishes to be happy.
It is her only alternative. Thanks to the nobility
of our nature, she does not always take it. No;
for years she battles with cruelty, and still presses
with affection the hand which smites her, but it is
fearfully at her own expense. Such endurance preys
upon her health, and hastens her exit to the asylum
of the grave. If this is to be avoided, she must
learn to forget, what woman should never be tempted
to forget, the vows, the self-renunciating devotedness
of impassioned youth; she must learn to oppose indifference,
to neglect and repel him with a heart as cold as his
own. But what a tragedy lies involved in a career
like this! We gaze on something infinitely more
terrible than murder; we see our nature abandoned to
the mercy of malignant passions, and the sacred susceptibilities
which were intended to fertilize with the waters of
charity the pathway of life, sending forth streams
of bitterest gall. A catalogue of such cases,
faithfully compiled, would eclipse, in turpitude and
horror, all the calendars of crime that have ever
sickened the attention of the world.
The obligations of gentleness and kindness are extensive
as the claims to manliness; these three qualities
must go together. There are some cases, however,
in which such obligations are of special force.
Perhaps a precept here will be presented most appropriately
under the guise of an example. We have now before
our mind’s eye a couple, whose marriage tie
was, a few months since, severed by death. The
husband was a strong, hale, robust sort of a man, who
probably never knew a day’s illness in the course
of his life, and whose sympathy on behalf of weakness
or suffering in others it was exceedingly difficult
to evoke; while his partner was the very reverse,
by constitution weak and ailing, but withal a woman
of whom any man might and ought to have been proud.
Her elegant form, her fair transparent skin, the classical
contour of her refined and expressive face, might
have led a Canova to have selected her as a model
of feminine beauty. But alas! she was weak; she
could not work like other women; her husband could
not boast among his shopmates how much she
contributed to the maintenance of the family, and how
largely she could afford to dispense with the fruit
of his labours. Indeed, with a noble infant in
her bosom, and the cares of a household resting entirely