this naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a man must
do it but seldom and at appreciable intervals:

"Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat."

["But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in
his bosom."--Virg., Georg., iii. 137.]

I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than
those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;
there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should
proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth
nothing.

They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks,
like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing else but
virtue. They are indeed things that have some relation to one another,
but there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix their names
and titles; 'tis a wrong to them both so to confound them. Nobility is a
brave quality, and with good reason introduced; but forasmuch as 'tis a
quality depending upon others, and may happen in a vicious person, in
himself nothing, 'tis in estimate infinitely below virtue';

["If nobility be virtue, it loses its quality in all things wherein
not virtuous: and if it be not virtue, 'tis a small matter."
--La Byuyere.]

'tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, depending
upon time and fortune: various in form, according to the country; living
and mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and common;
of succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one.
Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities,
fall into communication and commerce, but this is consummated in itself,
and of no use to the service of others. There was proposed to one of our
kings the choice of two candidates for the same command, of whom one was
a gentleman, the other not; he ordered that, without respect to quality,
they should choose him who had the most merit; but where the worth of the
competitors should appear to be entirely equal, they should have respect
to birth: this was justly to give it its rank. A young man unknown,
coming to Antigonus to make suit for his father's command, a valiant man
lately dead: "Friend," said he, "in such preferments as these, I have not
so much regard to the nobility of my soldiers as to their prowess."
And, indeed, it ought not to go as it did with the offic