GLAMOUR.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2906, 8 June 1878, Page 4

GLAMOUR.

What is the spell which binds sweetness to peevishness, feminine delicacy to hybrid coarseness, unselfishness to domination, and self-denying love to rampant egotism ? Who knows ? There are mysteries in sea and slcy which no. man has yet fathomed ; but greater lhan them all is the mystery of human love, and why one uugaiuly soul is prized, and another, beautiful and precious, is discarded. "What friendship is in its degree, so is marriage to.a still more striking extent. We sometimes see the sweetest and dearest little woman in the world married to a bluff, burly, cross-grained fellow, who goes through life like a perpetual thunder-cloud from which the slightest shock brings angry spluiterings, sullen murmurs, and fiery outbursts, destructive of all peace and comfort. Yet Tit&nia worships her rough-skinned treasure; he is a " gentle joy" to her, and she finds her happiness in wreathing.garlands for his long-eared head, and in idealizing him —dull ass as he is—till shejhas. made him into a god by whom all men might take a pattern. Her sister, married to Jlyperion, as good as he is beautiful, and

as clever as ho is good, finds her lot in life a hard one, and thinks every wife is to be envied where she is only to be pitied. She talks feelingly of tho dreadful punishment which falls on.women who make the one great mistake of their lives, and waxes eloquent on the sin of parents suffering their daughters to marry before they know their own minds or those of the men whom they take for better and worse. Her eyes fill up with tears when she speaks of Titania's happiness, and how good and kind, for j all his rough exterior, is that long-eared Bottom of hers who shows his rough side to the world but keeps only his down and velvet for home. - And then she sighs and looks out into the distance as one whose heart is full of sadness, and whose tongue might say bitter things if she would; but she will not. If unhappy, she is loyal; if unappreciated, and not fairly dealt by, she understands the holy reticence of martyrdom; and though her marriage has been a mistake, she will not make the world the confidant of her griefs. Nevertheless, she gives that same world clearly to understand that she is unhappy and has been taken in, and that man for man Hyperion does not come near Bottom, and Titania is to be .congratulated while she is only to be commiserated. This is glamour in an inverted form—glamour dealing with poison not ambrosia, but quite as general as the other, if somewhat more distressing. It must not be thought that women alone have the fee-simple of this kind of thing; that they and they only love the base and despise the noble by the influence of that strange state of mind which, for want of a better word, we are forced to call glamour. Perhaps we see it even more distinctly in men, for the objects to-which the stronger sex sometimes carry their worship, or it may be their displeasure, are certainly of a kind which make other women—behind the scenes—open their eyes and ask, Why ? Look at that unsuspected, honest-hearted gentleman who gives his good old family name and personal honour into the keeping of a woman who has not one qualification to make her worthy custodian of cither; and very many which one might have thought would have made any wise man hesitate before he gave himself and his precious treasures into such perilous guardianship. He alone ignores what all other-men know ; he alone believes where others more than doubt. The woman, to eyea untouched by glamour, has not a charm ; she is rude and violent, ill-bred and- vulgar; her very beauty, what there is of it, is of a low type; and in all probability she has lost the freshness of her skin as long ago as that of her mind. Yet the man whom she holds in thrall loves her, and marries to his ruin a kind of nineteenth century Circe, who, if she does not transform him into a swine, does lower the tone of his mind, so that she makes him accept dishonour for fame and humiliation for glory. But his brother, ■ who has found Solomon's " crown of glory," thinks no more of his treasure than if it were an old brown paper fool's! cap; and lets what might have been the sweetness of his married life run to waste through neglect and indifference—as one who gives up his stately flower-garden and noble orchard to thorns and briars, and lets his cask of Shiraz wine run info the sand for want of .a little' care in hoops and nails to keep the wood together. .■..._.■. Love of itself is glamour, and the strongest to be found. No lesson learnt by experience, however sharply taught and sadly conned, can enlighten the numbed senses which love has sent to sleep by its magic fascination ; and things as plain as the gun in heaven to others, are as dark as night, unfathomable as the sea to those who let themselves love before they prove. Glamour, the fascination of certain professioni; glamour, that unreasoning love of place which makes you accept all sorts of personal discomfort and mortal disquietude that you may look out on those woods; watch the coming and going of those waves ; study the lights and shadows as they fall on those mountains ; find the maidenhair in that cleft, and the bee-orchis in yonder bank. Glamour, the spell which Paris, Circe among cities, throws over those tb whom her bright and radiant beauty, her light laugh, her swift mirth, her feet hurrying on to pleasure, her feminine assumption of supremacy over all the world besides, are so many ingredients in the philtre which she brews and of which they drink. Glamour, the passionate charms of Italy; and those, more masculine and spirit-stirring, of the dark and truehearted north. Glamour, the remem-. brances of the early home and the visions of distant lands. But what would life be without this glamour? A dull house of rough wood wherein the soul gloomed through its miserable days, and whereto no beauty came, no love, no poetry, no idealizing brightness of fancy, making the mean things great and the sordid noble. If a bad master, Glamour, like much else, is a good servant; and while kept under manageable control is a faculty for which we may thank- God for his gift, not bewail the lot of man for his possession.—Exchange.