ON THE CONSTANCY OF WOMAN.

_(For the Mirror.)_


True love has no reserves--LANSDOWNE.

There is not an accomplishment in the mind of a female more enchanting,
nor one which adds more dignity and grace to her person, than constancy.
Whatever share of beauty she may be possessed of, whether she may have
the tinge of Hebe on her cheeks, vying in colour with the damask rose,
and breath as fragrant--and the graceful and elegant gait of an
Ariel--still, unless she is endowed with this characteristic of a
virtuous and ingenuous mind, all her personal charms will fade away,
through neglect, like decaying fruit in autumn. The whole list of female
virtues are in their kind essential to the felicity of man; but there is
such beauty and grandeur of sentiment displayed in the exercise of
constancy, that it has been justly esteemed by the dramatic poets as the
chief excellence of their heroines. It nerves the arm of the warrior
when absent from the dear object of his devoted attachment, when he
reflects, that his confidence in her regard was never misplaced; but
yet, amidst the dangers of his profession, he sighs for his abode of
domestic happiness, where the breath of calumny never entered, and where
the wily and lustful seducer, if he dared to put his foot, shrunk back
aghast with shame and confusion, like Satan when he first beheld the
primitive innocence and concord between Adam and Eve in the Garden of
Eden. It adds a zest to the toils of the peasant, and his heart expands