stick
our rhapsodies together "with a hot needle, and a burnt thread," and no
good will come of it. It is envy, jealousy--we don't like to see them so
much better than ourselves. We dare not tell them what we really think of
them, lest they should think less of us. So we speak with a disguise. Sir
Walter Scott forgot himself when he spoke of them:--

"Oh woman, in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please;"

as if they were stormy peterals, whose appearance indicated shipwreck and
troubled waters on the sea of life. Woman's bard, and such he deserves to
be entitled, should only have thought of her as the "fair and gentle maid,"
or the "pleasing wife," _placens uxor_--the perfectness of man's nature,
by whom he is united to goodness, gentleness, the two, man and woman
united, making the complete one--as "_Mulier est hominis
confusio_"--malevolent would he be that would mistranslate it "man's
confusion," for--

"Madam, the meaning of this Latin is,
That womankind to man is sovereign bliss."--_Dryden_.

By this "mystical union," man is made "Paterfamilias," that name of truest
dignity. See him in that best position, in the old monuments of James's
time, kneeling with his spouse opposite at the same table, with their
seven sons and seven daughters, sons behind the father, and daughters
behind the mother. It is worth looking a day or two beyond the turmoil or
even joys of our life, and to contemplate in the mind's eye, one's own
_post mortem_ and monumental honour. Such a sight, with all the loving
thoughts of loving life, ere this maturity of family repose--is it not
enough to make old bachelors gaze with envy, and go and advertise for
wives?--each one sighing as he goes, that he has no happy home to receive
him--no best of womankind his spouse--no children to run to meet him and
devour him with kisses, while secret sweetness is overflowing at his heart
and so he beats it like a poor player, and says, that is, if he be a
Latinist--

"At non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor
Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
Praeripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent."--_Lucret_.

But leaving the "gentle bachelor" to settle the matter with himself as he
may, I will not be hurried beyond bounds--not bounds of the subject, or
what is due to it, but of your patience, Eusebius, who know and feel, more
sensibly than I can express, woman's worth. You want to know her
wrongs--and you say that I am a s