ATTACHMENTS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 47, 21 November 1891, Page 606

ATTACHMENTS.

Attachments to persons and places are among the most familiar sentiments of the human heart ; yet there are some very mistaken notions respecting them. The general idea is that they are, or ought to be, as enduring as the heart itself; that no one who has ever cherished either friendship for man or love for woman should change, or can change ; and that let our circumstances or our situation on the globe be altered as they may, we must never forget the jreople who formerly were around us, or the spot we once called our home. Thus, when we part from a friend whom we are almost certain never to see again, we take as many vows of fidelity, and exchange as many promises of a close epistolary correspondence, as if our mutual welfare in future depended upon a continual attachment, or as if anything else would be a kind of treason against one of the most sacred of human sentiments. We depart for the new scene and the new society with desponding hearts, as if we believed it ever impossible again to form such attachments as those we are just breaking. It may be whispered to us that there is much pleasure in novelty, and that we may perhaps soon forget our old friends for the sake of the new, and lose the recollection of former scenes in the charm of the present. But we repel these insinuations with a kind of indignation, and determine, I may almost say whether we will or no, to preserve a mournful retrospection of the past. Now, the truth is, we are not designed to live upon the recollection of either past faces or past scenes. Friendship and love are not to be supported for any length of time without personal intercourse; nor can any scene ever be so important to us in recollection as that in which we are immediately placed. Instead of affection being a tangible object, which we can pledge away forever, as the heart is supposed to be in nonsensical poetry, it is a power residing inalienably within us, to be exerted on whatever successive objects we are pleased with, the new objects regularly attracting a certain quantity of affection away from the old, till, in the end, the old have little or none remaining. Some readers will exclaim against this doctrine as a most unnatural one ; but, in order to convince ourselves that it is really correct, let us recollect the fate of any one of all the fiiendships and loves we ever cherished. Suppose, for instance, the case in which friendships are thought to be most warm —a school intimacy. Who that ever entertained even the most enthusiastic attachment of this kind, and, on parting, vowed to write regularly every month, if not oftener, ever found that the correspondence was in the least degree interesting after the first year ’ A few fond letters are exchanged, breathing the very spirit of old friendship. But soon this becomes tireseme. One of the parties happens to delay answering a letter of the other, till he is almost ashamed to do it; the reply to this is more dilatory still ; and at last the correspondence, from which so much is expected, ceases altogether. It is much the same with tenderer intimacies. Love, to be lasting, must be frequently fed with a sight of the loved object. At a distance, other objects are presented, and the affair is at length only maintained at the expense of a struggle of principle—in which it is, of course, no longer love. Nor is it wrong that our affections should thus be transferable. If we could never love but one woman in the course of our lives, or experience a friendship but for one local set of friends, we would be miserable creatures indeed. The chances would, in that case, be ten to one against our obtaining a partner in the least agreeable to us. We would probably enjoy both friendship and love only for one brief space in youth, while happening to be at a particular place, far from our eventual residence. All the rest of life—every other part of the world—would to us be a waste. Now, as the case really stands, though the scenes and the friendsand the loves of youth are, perhaps, the most permanently endeared, and though it is certainly proper that we should not cast off old attachments with an appearance of indifference or inconstancy, so as to give pain to those we are parting from, we can, nevertheless, find more or less pleasure in all the scenes which fortune has provided for our residence.