per and that of your companion, but your whole
character, considered as physical, mental, and moral beings, will be
mutually improved or injured through life. You will be placed, as I
have already intimated, at a school of mutual instruction, which is to
continue without vacation or change of monitors,--perhaps half a
century;--during every one of the earliest years of which, your
character will be more really and more permanently modified than in the
same amount of time at any prior period of your education, unless it
were in the veriest infancy.

Surely then it is no light affair to make preparation for a school like
this. There is no period in the life of a young man so important; for
there is none on which his happiness and the happiness of others so
essentially depend.

Before I advert to the particular qualifications which it is necessary
for you to seek in so intimate a friend, I shall mention a few
considerations of a general nature.

Settle it, in the first place, that absolute perfection is not to be
found. There are not a few young men of a romantic turn of mind,
fostered and increased by reading the fictitious writings of the day,
who have pictured to themselves for companions in life unreal forms and
angelic characters, instead of beings who dwell in 'houses of clay,'
and are 'crushed before the moth.' Such 'exalted imaginations' must
sooner or later be brought down: happy will it be with those who are
chastened in due season.

In the second place, resolve never to be misled by any adventitious
circumstances. Wealth, beauty, rank, friends, &c, are all proper
considerations, but they are not of the _first_ importance. They are
merely secondary qualifications. Marriage must never be a matter of
bargain and sale; for

In the third place, no marriage engagement should ever be thought of
unless there is first a genuine and rational attachment. No cold
calculations of profit or loss, no hereditary estates or other
adventitious circumstances, though they were equivalent to a peerage,
or a realm, should ever, for one moment, even in thought, be
substituted for love. It is treason to Him who ordained this most
blessed institution.

But fourthly, though wealth, however valuable in itself, is by no means
a recommendation in the present case, yet the means of a comfortable
support are certainly to be regarded. It is painful to see a very young
couple, with a large family, and destitute of the means of support.