Love and Death
Death must come, and love must come; but the state in which they find us?—whether blinded, astonished, and frightened, and ignorant, or, like reasonable creatures, guarded, prepared, and fit to manage our own feelings?—this, I suppose, depends on ourselves; and for want of such self-management and self-knowledge, look at the evils that ensue!—hasty, improvident, unsuitable marriages; repining, diseased, or vicious celibacy; irretrievable infamy; cureless insanity:—the death that comes early, and the love that comes late, reversing the primal laws of our nature.
It is of little consequence how unequal the conventional difference of rank, as in Germany—how equal the condition, station, and means, as in America,—if there be inequality between the sexes; and if the sentiment which attracts and unites them to each other, and the contracts and relations springing out of this sentiment, be not equally well understood by both, equally sacred with both, equally binding on both.