The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 302: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ee ee ee ; 7 | TOO LATE 267 Oh, who can estimate the devotion of woman? Who can define a limit to her generous sympathies? Unto what can we liken the boundless love of which her heart is susceptible? To the elastic air, which is capable of an expansion so vast that a cubic inch may dilate to a volume filling all space, infinite though it be! Yes, to the air, so falsely called empty, let us assimilate woman’s love. For even as that same atmosphere is filled with the perfume of flowers a million times mingled, so is woman’s love fraught with all those sentiments of the soul that are in themselves a delicious essence and a fragrant balm; again, as the air becomes the medium of wafting all the harmonies of nature to the ear, so is woman’s love breathed in melodious tones, combin- ing all the modulations of her tenderest sensibilities; and, lastly, even as the atmosphere is radiant with the lustre of the orb of day, so does woman’s love diffuse its brightness from beaming eyes and in sunny smiles. Oh, thou vile, ruthless ruffian that could raise thine hand against a woman! Oh, thou black-hearted wretch that could remain unmoved by the tears which thine own ill- treatment has provoked! Knowest thou not what woman’s love is? It would prompt her to die for thee, to lay down her life to save thine or the lives of her children. She has her faults, her failings, and her caprices; but, O man, pardon them, pardon them, for they are as nothing in comparison with her devotion, her affection, and her tenderness. As a erain of mustard-seed is to the whole earth, so are woman’s foibles to her love. But you will point out bad wives, prof- ligate daughters and sisters, abandoned mothers? Alas! alas! it is true — too true; but ask thyself, O man, who made them thus? who reduced those wretched creatures to what they are? The reply, if truly given, recoils with a crushing weight of terrible accusation upon thyself. For ’tis thou who hast worked all that infernal mischief. Take the vilest of the vile, the most loathsome of the loathsome forms of vice whose features bear the vivid impress of dissipation and debauchery, and trace this lost one’s history of crime back to that moment when virgin innocence was wrecked in guilty enjoyment, and thou wilt hear a tale of fervent love on her part and cruel deception on that of the seducer. Yes, ’tis thou, O man, who art the most ruthless enemy and the most unrelenting oppressor of that sex to proclaim (C(O) AAI Doo (C(O)