f life and never herself disturbed it, acting the part
of a breakwater which protects a space of calm, and never destroys the
peace that it has made. This may be true for artists whose occupation
is rather aesthetic than intellectual, and does not get much help or
benefit from talk; but the ideal marriage for a man of great literary
culture would be one permitting some equality of companionship, or, if
not equality, at least interest. That this ideal is not a mere dream,
but may consolidate into a happy reality, several examples prove; yet
these examples are not so numerous as to relieve me from anxiety about
your chances of finding such companionship. The different education of
the two sexes separates them widely at the beginning, and to meet on any
common ground of culture a second education has to be gone through. It
rarely happens that there is resolution enough for this.

The want of thoroughness and reality in the education of both sexes, but
especially in that of women, may be attributed to a sort of policy which
is not very favorable to companionship in married life. It appears to be
thought wise to teach boys things which women do not learn, in order to
give women a degree of respect for men's attainments, which they would
not be so likely to feel if they were prepared to estimate them
critically; whilst girls are taught arts and languages which until
recently were all but excluded from our public schools, and won no rank
at our universities. Men and women had consequently scarcely any common
ground to meet upon, and the absence of serious mental discipline in the
training of women made them indisposed to submit to the irksomeness of
that earnest intellectual labor which might have remedied the
deficiency. The total lack of accuracy in their mental habits was then,
and is still for the immense majority of women, the least easily
surmountable impediment to culture. The history of many marriages which
have failed to realize intellectual companionship is comprised in a
sentence which was actually uttered by one of the most accomplished of
my friends: "She knew nothing when I married her. I tried to teach her
something; it made her angry, and I gave it up."

LETTER II.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.

The foundations of the intellectual marriage--Marriage not a snare or
pitfall for the intellectual--Men of culture, who marry badly, often
have themselves to blame--For every grade of the m