d."
In the union of which I am treating the demonstrative and ordinary
appearance will be that of entire equality, which is heightened by the
inner, and for the greater part unexplained and undeveloped, impression
of a contrary nature. There is in either party a perfect reliance, an
idea of inequality with the most entire assurance that it can never
operate unworthily in the stronger party, or produce insincerity or
servility in the weaker. There will in reality always be some reserve,
some shadow of fear between equals, which in the friendship of unequals,
if happily assorted, can find no place. There is a pouring out of the
heart on the one side, and a cordial acceptance on the other, which
words are inadequate to describe.

To proceed. If from friendship we go forward to that which in all
languages is emphatically called love, we shall still find ourselves
dogged and attended by inequality. Nothing can be more certain, however
we may seek to modify and abate it, than the inequality of the sexes.
Let us attend to it as it stands in Milton:

For contemplation he and velour formed
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him.

Thus it is painted to us as having been in Paradise; and with similar
inequality have the sexes subsisted in all ages and nations since. If
it were possible to take from the fair sex its softness and attractive
grace, and endow it instead with audacious, masculine and military
qualities, there is scarcely any one that does not perceive, with
whatever advantages it might be attended in other respects, that it
would be far from tending to cherish and increase the passion of love.

It is in reality obvious, that man and woman, as they come from the
hands of nature, are so much upon a par with each other, as not to
afford the best subjects between whom to graft a habit of entire,
unalterable affection. In the scenes of vulgar and ordinary society,
a permanent connection between persons of opposite sexes is too apt to
degenerate into a scene of warfare, where each party is for ever engaged
in a struggle for superiority, and neither will give way. A penetrating
observer, with whom in former days I used intimately to converse, was
accustomed to say, that there was generally more jarring and ill blood
between the two parties in the first year of their marriage, than during
all the remainder of their lives. It is at length found necessary, as
betwe