t acquire the faults of littleness, does
not lose his native grandeur; but he feels his genius troubled,
combated, worried, distempered, and he makes a pure loss of immense
efforts to surmount miseries unworthy of him."

Let a husband be the true and pure guardian of his family, laboring
always to adorn himself with the godlike gems of wisdom, virtue, and
honor; let him bear himself in relation to his wife with gracious
kindness towards her faults, with grateful recognition of her merits,
with steady sympathy for her trials, with hearty aid for her better
aspirations, and she must be of a vile stock, if she does not revere
him, and minister unto him with all the graces and sweetness of her
nature.

Let a wife, in her whole intercourse with her husband, try the
efficacy of gentleness, purity, sincerity, scrupulous truth, meek and
patient forbearance, an invariable tone and manner of deference, and,
if he is not a brute, he cannot help respecting her and treating her
kindly; and in nearly all instances he will end by loving her and
living happily with her.

But if he is vulgar and vicious, despotic, reckless, so as to have no
devotion for the august prizes and incorruptible pleasures of
existence; if she is an unappeasable termagant, or a petty worrier,
so taken up with trifling annoyances, that, wherever she looks, "the
blue rotunda of the universe shrinks into a housewifery room;" if the
presence of each acts as a morbid irritant on the nerves of the
other, to the destruction of comfort, and the lowering of self
respect, and the draining away of peace and strength, their
companionship must infallibly be a companionship in wretchedness and
loss.

The banes of domestic life are littleness, falsity, vulgarity,
harshness, scolding vociferation, an incessant issuing of superfluous
prohibitions and orders, which are regarded as impertinent
interferences with the general liberty and repose, and are
provocative of rankling or exploding resentments. The blessed
antidotes that sweeten and enrich domestic life are refinement, high
aims, great interests, soft voices, quiet and gentle manners,
magnanimous tempers, forbearance from all unnecessary commands or
dictation, and generous allowances of mutual freedom. Love makes
obedience lighter than liberty. Man wears a noble allegiance, not as
a collar, but as a garland. The Graces are never so lovely as when
seen waiting on the Virtues; and, where they thus dwell together,
they