University of Virginia Library

THE BROKEN HEART.

It is a common practice with those who have outlived
the susceptibility of early feeling, or have been brought
up in the gay heartlessness of dissipated life, to laugh at
all love stories, and to treat the tales of romantic passion
as mere fictions of novelists and poets. My observations
on human nature have induced me to think otherwise.
They have convinced me, that however the surface of the
character may be chilled and frozen by the cares of the
world, or cultivated into mere smiles by the arts of society,
still there are dormant fires lurking in the depths of
the coldest bosom, which, when once enkindled, become
impetuous, and are sometimes desolating in their effects.
Indeed, I am a true believer in the blind deity, and go to
the full extent of his doctrines. Shall I confess it!—I
believe in broken hearts, and the possibility of dying of
disappointed love. I do not, however, consider it a malady
often fatal to my own sex; but I firmly believe
that it withers down many a lovely woman into an early
grave.

Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature
leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the
world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life,
or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He seeks for
fame, for fortune, for space in the world's thought, and dominion
over his fellow men. But a woman's whole life
is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is
there her ambition strives for empires; it is there her
avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her
sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in
the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless—for
it is a bankruptcy of the heart.

To a man the disappointment of love may occasion some
bitter pangs: it wounds some feelings of tenderness—it
blasts some prospects of felicity; but he is an active being
—he may dissipate his thoughts in the whirl of varied occupation,
or may plunge into the tide of pleasure; or, if the
scene of disappointment be too full of painful associations,
he can shift his abode at will, and taking as it were the
wings of the morning, can “fly to the uttermost parts of
the earth, and be at rest.”

But woman's is comparatively a fixed, a secluded, and a

meditative life. She is more the companion of her own
thoughts and feelings; and if they are turned to ministers
of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation? Her lot
is to be wooed and won; and if unhappy in her love, her
heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and
sacked, and abandoned and left desolate.

How many bright eyes grow dim—how many soft
cheeks grow pale—how many lovely forms fade away into
the tomb, and none can tell the cause that blighted their
loveliness! As the dove will clasp its wings to its side,
and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on
its vitals, so it is the nature of woman to hide from the
world the pangs of wounded affection. The love of a
delicate female is always shy and silent. Even when
fortunate, she scarcely breathes it to herself; but when
otherwise, she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and
there lets it cower and brood among the ruins of her peace.
With her the desire of the heart has failed. The great
charm of existence is at an end. She neglects all the
cheerful excercises which gladden the spirits, quicken the
pulses, and send the tide of life in healthful currents
through the veins. Her rest is broken—the sweet refreshment
of sleep is poisoned by melancholy dreams—
“dry sorrow drinks her blood,” until her enfeebled frame
sinks under the slightest external injury. Look for her,
after a little while, and you will find friendship weeping
over her untimely grave, and wondering that one who
but lately glowed with all the radiance of health and
beauty, should so speedily be brought down to “darkness
and the worm.” You will be told of some wintry
chill, some casual indisposition, that laid her low;—but
no one knows of the mental malady that previously sapped
her strength, and made her so easy a prey to the
spoiler.

She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of
the grove; graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but
with the worm preying at its heart. We find it suddenly
withering, when it should be most fresh and luxuriant.
We see it drooping its branches to the earth, and
shedding leaf by leaf; until, wasted and perished away,
it falls even in the stillness of the forest; and, as we muse
over the beautiful ruin, we strive in vain to recollect the
blast or thunderbolt that could have smitten it with decay.

I have seen many instances of women running to waste

and self-neglect, and disappearing gradually from the
earth, almost as if they had been exhaled to heaven; and
have repeatedly fancied that I could trace their death
through the various declensions of consumption, cold, debility,
languor, melancholy, until I reached the first sympton
of disappointed love. But an instance of the kind
was lately told to me; the circumstances are well known
in the country where they happened, and I shall but give
them in the manner as they were related.

Every one must recollect the tragical story of young
E—, the Irish patriot; it was too touching to be soon
forgotten. During the troubles in Ireland he was tried,
condemned, and executed on a charge of treason. His
fate made a deep impression on public sympathy. He
was so young—so intelligent—so generous—so brave—so
every thing that we are apt to like in a young man. His
conduct under trial, too, was so lofty and intrepid. The
noble indignation with which he repelled the charge of
treason against his country—the eloquent vindication of
his name—and his pathetic appeal to posterity, in the
hopeless hour of condemnation—all these entered deeply
into every generous bosom, and even his enemies lamented
the stern policy that dictated his execution.[1]

But there was one heart, whose anguish it would be
impossible to describe. In happier days and fairer fortunes,
he had won the affections of a beautiful and interesting
girl, the daughter of a late celebrated Irish barrister.
She loved him with the disinterested fervour of a woman's
first and early love. When every worldly maxim
arrayed itself against him; when blasted in fortune, and
disgrace and danger darkened around his name, she loved
him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If,

then, his fate could awaken the sympathy even of his
foes, what must have been the agony of her, whose whole
soul was occupied by his image! Let those tell who have
had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed between them
and the being they most loved on earth—who have sat
at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold and lonely
world, from whence all that was most lovely and loving
had departed.

But then the horrors of such a grave! so frightful, so

dishonoured! There was nothing for memory to dwell
on that could sooth the pang of separation—none of
those tender, though melancholy circumstances, that endear
the parting scene—nothing to melt sorrow into
those blessed tears, sent, like the dews of heaven, to revive
the heart in the parting hour of anguish.

To render her widowed situation more desolate, she
had incurred her father's displeasure by her unfortunate
attachment, and was an exile from the paternal roof.
But could the sympathy and kind offices of friends have
reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she
would have experienced no want of consolation, for the
Irish are a people of quick and generous sensibilities.
The most delicate and cherishing attentions were paid her
by families of wealth and distinction. She was led into
society, and they tried by all kinds of occupation and
amusement to dissipate her grief, and wean her from the
tragical story of her loves. But it was all in vain.
There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch
the soul—that penetrate to the vital seat of happiness—
and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom.
She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure,
but she was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude.
She walked about in a sad reverie, apparently unconscious
of the world around her. She carried with
her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishments
of friendship, and “heeded not the song of the charmer,
charm he never so wisely.”

The person who told me her story had seen her at a
masquerade. There can be no exhibition of far-gone
wretchedness more striking and painful than to meet it
in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre,
lonely and joyless, where all around is gay—to see it
dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan
and woe-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the
poor heart into a momentary forgetfulness of sorrow.
After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy
crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself
down on the steps of an orchestra, and looking about for
some time with a vacant air, that showed her insensibility
to the garish scene, she began, with the capriciousness
of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air.
She had an exquisite voice; but on this occasion it was
so simple, so touching, it breathed forth such a soul of

wretchedness, that she drew a crowd mute and silent around
her, and melted every one into tears.

The story of one so true and so tender could not but excite
great interest in a country remarkable for enthusiasm.
It completely won the heart of a brave officer,
who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so
true to the dead could not but prove affectionate to the
living. She declined his attentions, for her thoughts
were irrevocably engrossed by the memory of her former
lover. He, however, persisted in his suit. He solicited
not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by
her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own
destitute and dependent situation, for she was existing
on the kindness of friends. In a word, he at length succeeded
in gaining her hand, though with the solemn assurance,
that her heart was unalterably another's.

He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change
of scene might wear out the remembrance of early woes.
She was an amiable and exemplary wife, and made an effort
to be a happy one; but nothing could cure the silent
and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very
soul. She wasted away in a slow, but hopeless decline,
and at length sunk into the grave, the victim of a
broken heart.[2]

`I am asked if I have any thing to say why sentence of death
should not be pronounced upon me. Was I to suffer only death, after
being adjudged guilty, I should bow in silence; but a man in my
situation has not only to combat with the difficulties of fortune, but
also the difficulties of prejudice: the sentence of the law which delivers
over his body to the executioner consigns his character to obloquy.
The man dies, but his memory lives; and that mine may
not forfeit all claim to the respect of my countrymen, I use this occasion
to vindicate myself from some of the charges advanced against
me.

`I am charged with being an emissary of France—'tis false! I am
no emissary—I did not wish to deliver up my country to a foreign
power, and least of all, to France. No! never did I entertain the
idea of establishing French power in Ireland—God forbid. On the
contrary, it is evident from the introductory paragraph of the address
of the Provisional Government, that every hazard attending an independent
effort was deemed preferable to the more fatal risk of introducing
a French army into the country. Small would be our claims
to patriotism and to sense, and palpable our affectation of the love
of liberty, if we were to encourage the profanation of our shores by
a people who are slaves themselves, and the unprincipled and abandoned
instruments of imposing slavery on others.

`If such an inference be drawn from any part of the proclamation
of the Provisional Government, it calumniates their views, and is
not warranted by the fact. How could they speak of freedom to
their countrymen? How assume such an exalted motive, and meditate
the introduction of a power which has been the enemy of freedom
in every part of the globe? Reviewing the conduct of France
to other countries, could we expect better towards us? No! Let
not, then, any man attaint my memory by believing that I could
have hoped for freedom through the aid of France, and betrayed
the sacred cause of liberty by committing it to the power of her most
determined foe: had I done so, I had not deserved to live; and dying
with such a weight upon my character, I had merited the honest
execrations of that country which gave me birth, and to which
I would have given freedom.

`Had I been in Switzerland. I would have fought against the
French—in the dignity of freedom, I would have expired on the
threshold of that country, and they should have entered it only by
passing over my lifeless corpse. Is it then to be supposed that I
would be slow to make the same sacrifice to my native land? Am
I, who lived but to be of service to my country, and who would
subject myself to the bondage of the grave to give her independence
—am I to be loaded with the foul and grievous calumny of being an
emissary of France?

`My lords, it may be part of the system of angry justice, to bow a
man's mind, by humiliation to meet the ignominy of the scaffold;
but worse to me than the scaffold's shame, or the scaffold's terrors,
would be the imputation of having been the agent of French despotism
and ambition; and while I have breath, I will call upon my
countrymen not to believe me guilty of so foul a crime against their
liberties and their happiness.

`Though you, my lord, sit there a judge, and I stand here a culprit,
yet you are but a man and I am another. I have a right therefore
to vindicate my character and motives from the aspersions of
calumny; and, as a man, to whom fame is dearer than life, I will
make the last use of that life in rescuing my name and my memory
from the afflicting imputation of having been an emissary of France,
or seeking her interference in the internal regulation of our affairs.

`Did I live to see a French army approach this country, I would
meet it on the shore, with a torch in one hand and a sword in the
other; I would receive them with all the destruction of war! I
would animate my countrymen to immolate them in their very
boats; and before our native soil should be polluted by a foreign
foe, if they succeeded in landing, I would burn every blade of grass
before them, raze every house, contend to the last for every inch of
ground; and the last spot on which the hope of freedom should desert
me, that spot I would make my grave! What I cannot do, I
leave a legacy to my country because I feel conscious that my death
were unprofitable, and all hopes of liberty extinct, the moment a
French army obtained a footing in this land. God forbid that I
should see my country under the hands of a foreign power. If the
French should come as a foreign enemy. Oh! my countrymen! meet
them on the shore with a torch in one hand and a sword in the
other: receive them with all the destruction of war; immolate them
in their boats, before our native soil shall be polluted by a foreign
foe! If they succeed in landing, fight them on the strand, burn
every blade of grass before them as they advance—raze every
house; and if you are driven to the centre of your country, collect
your provisions, your property, your wives and your daughters;
form a circle around them—fight while but two men are left; and
when but one remains, let that man set fire to the pile, and release
himself, and the families of his fallen countrymen, from the
tyranny of France.

`My lamp of life is nearly expired—my race is finished: the grave
opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom All I request then,
at parting from the world, is the charity of its silence. Let no man
write my epitaph, for as no man, who knows my motives, dare vindicate
them let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them: let them
and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed,
till other times and other men can do justice to my character.'