Woman! dearest woman! born to alleviate our sorrow, and soothe our anguish! who canst bid feeling's tear trickle down the obdurate cheek, or mould the iron heart, till it be pliable as a child's--why stain thy gentle dominion by inconstancy? why dismiss the first form that haunted thy maiden pillow, until--or that vision is a dear reality beside thee--or thou liest pale and hushed, on thy last couch of repose? And then--shall not thy virgin spirit hail him? Why first fetter us, slaves to virtue and to thee; _then_ become the malevolent Typhoon, on whose wings our good genius flies for ever? In this--far worse than the iconoclasts of yore art thou! _They_ but disfigured images of man's rude fashioning: whilst _thou_ wouldst injure the _once_ loved form of God's high creation,--wouldst entail on the body a premature decay--and on that which dieth not, an irradicable blight. "Then the mortal coldness of the soul, like death itself comes down; It cannot feel for others woes--it dares not dream its own. That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears; And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears." On such a character as was Delancey's, the blow did indeed fall heavy. Not that his paroxysms of grief were more lasting, or his pangs more acute, than is usual in similar cases; but to his moral worth it was death. An infliction of this nature, falling on a comparatively virtuous man, is productive of few evil consequences. It may give a holier turn to his thoughts--wean him from sublunary vanities--and purify his nature. On an utterly depraved man, its effects may be fleeting also; for few can _here_ expect a moral regeneration. But falling on Delancey, it was not thus. The slender thread that bound him to virtue, was snapt asunder; the germ whence the good of his nature might have sprung, destroyed for ever. Such a man could not love purely again. To expect him to wander to another font, and imbibe from as clear a stream, would be madness. The love of a man of the world, let it be the first and best, is gross and earthly enough; but let him be betrayed in that love--let him see the staff on which he confidingly leant, break from under him--and he becomes from henceforth the deceiver--but never the deceived. When Delmé saw him, Delancey was writhing under his affliction. When he again entered the world, and it was soon, he regarded it as a wide mart, where he might gratify his appetites, and unrestrainedly indulge his evil propensities. He believed not that virtue and true nobility were there; could he but find them. He looked at the blow his happiness had sustained, and thought it afforded a fair sample of human nature. Oliver Delancey became a selfish and a profligate man.