Now we cannot too early set about correcting these false imaginings and vain expectations. Poets may sing of love as convulsing the frame, and rending the heart, and transmuting a human sentiment into divine extasies. But in the sober experience of life, such rapturous emotions are exceedingly rare. Indeed all the deep feelings of our nature are tranquil. It is the shallow stream only, which dashes, and sparkles, and deafens us by its noise. If you ever know the power of genuine love, you will find it as calm as it is intense. It will be in harmony with your other pure sentiments. Never will it subjugate, and tyrannize over, and do violence to, your whole nature. We have seen those,--and we suspect they belong to a numerous class,--who conceive that true love is attended by a Fatalism. It is first assumed, that every one must love some individual of the opposite sex. A necessity is laid on us all, it is thought, to bestow the affections in marriage. The question may not so much as be raised, "Is it certain that I shall ever meet with one to whom I can give my heart?" No, woman was made to love and to be married, that is her unalterable destiny. All that is to occupy her thoughts in this respect, is, "Who shall the individual be, on whom I must place my affections?" This opinion is surely erroneous. For Providence has so arranged the circumstances of human life and of society, that some females are absolutely precluded from forming the matrimonial connection. Ill-health,--to name no other cause,--sometimes positively debars one from this relation. There are abundant reasons, indeed, for which every one, ordinarily situated, should contemplate marriage. It is the design of our physical and moral constitution, and the spring of unsullied enjoyments, social and spiritual; and no one should voluntarily exclude herself from this bond, save for imperious considerations. Yet let no young woman predetermine that hers may not be an exception to the general law. The inquiry should at least arise in her mind, "May I not be of those, whose usefulness and happiness do not absolutely require their entering the marriage state?" But our friend thinks there is a fatalism not only in regard to her marriage, but in reference to the particular companion, with whom she must be associated for life. "Matches are made," say some, "in Heaven." Prudence has no concern with this matter. A young woman fixes her affections on some individual, and believes that it is decreed she should love and should marry him. If circumstances appear unpropitious to their intimacy, she is perfectly wretched. And this, not simply because she loves him so ardently, but because she believes a decree of Heaven will be violated, if their union fail of consummation. "Our presentiments," it is said "often work their own fulfilment." I cannot doubt, that, in the formation of the marriage bond, at least, they often do, and that with the saddest results.