312 DISEASES CLASS III. 1. 2. 3. 



the mother to her offspring. Men who have not had leisure to 

 cultivate their taste for visible objects, and who have not read the 

 works of poets and romance writers, are less liable to sentiment- 

 al love; and as ladies are educated rather with an idea of being 

 chosen, than of choosing; there are many men arid more women, 

 who have not much of this insanity; and are therefore more 

 easily induced to marry for convenience or interest, or from the 

 flattery of one sex to the other. 



In its fortunate gratification sentimental love is supposed to 

 supply the purest source of human felicity; and from the sudden- 

 ness with which many of those patients, described in species 

 I. of this genus, were seized with the maniacal hallucination, 

 there is reason (o believe, that the most violent sentimental love 

 may be acquired in a moment of time, as represented by Shak- 

 speare in the beginning of his Romeo and Juliet, as originally 

 written. 



Some have endeavoured to make a distinction between beauty 

 and grace, and have made them as it were rivals for the pos- 

 session of the human heart; but grace may be defined beauty in 

 action; for a sleeping beauty cannot be called graceful in what- 

 ever attitude she may recline; the muscles must be in action to 

 produce a graceful attitude, and the limbs to produce a graceful 

 motion. But though the object of love is beauty, yet the idea is 

 nevertheless much enhanced by the imagination of the lover; 

 which appears from this curious circumstance, that the lady of 

 his passion seldom appears so beautiful to the lover after a few 

 months separation, as his ideas had painted her in his absence; 

 and there is on that account, always a little disappointment felt 

 for a minute at their next interview from this hallucination of 

 his ideas. 



This passion of love produces reverie in its first state, which 

 exertion alleviates the pain of it, and by the assistance of hope 

 converts it into pleasure. Then the lover seeks solitude, lest' 

 this agreeable reverie should be interrupted by external stimuli, 

 as described by Virgil. 



Tantum inter clensas, umbrosa cacumina, fagos 

 Assiclue veniebat, ibi haec incondila solus 

 Montibus et sylvis studio j;;ctabat inuni. 



When the pain of love is so great as not to be relieved by the 

 exertions of reverie, as above described; as when it is misplaced 

 on an object, of which the lover cannot possess himself; it may 

 still be counteracted or conquered by the stoic philosophy, which 

 strips all things of their ornaments, and inculcates " nil admira- 

 ri." Of which lessons may be found in the meditations of Mar- 



