E.--(1) No considerate man can approach marriage without deep
concern. I, he will think, who have made hitherto so poor a business of
my own life, am now about to embrace the responsibility of another's.
Henceforth, there shall be two to suffer from my faults; and that other
is the one whom I most desire to shield from suffering. In view of our
impotence and folly, it seems an act of presumption to involve another's
destiny with ours. We should hesitate to assume command of an army or a
trading-smack; shall we not hesitate to become surety for the life and
happiness, now and henceforward, of our dearest friend? To be nobody's
enemy but one's own, although it is never possible to any, can least of
all be possible to one who is married. (2) I would not so much fear to
give hostages to fortune, if fortune ruled only in material things; but
fortune, as we call those minor and more inscrutable workings of
providence, rules also in the sphere of conduct. I am not so blind but
that I know I might be a murderer or even a traitor to-morrow; and now,
as if I were not already too feelingly alive to my misdeeds, I must
choose out the one person whom I most desire to please, and make her the
daily witness of my failures, I must give a part in all my dishonours to
the one person who can feel them more keenly than myself. (3) In all our
daring, magnanimous human way of life, I find nothing more bold than
this. To go into battle is but a small thing by comparison. It is the
last act of committal. After that, there is no way left, not even
suicide, but to be a good man. (4) She will help you, let us pray. And
yet she is in the same case; she, too, has daily made shipwreck of her
own happiness and worth; it is with a courage no less irrational than
yours, that she also ventures on this new experiment of life. Two who
have failed severally, now join their fortunes with a wavering hope. (5)
But it is from the boldness of the enterprise that help springs. To take
home to your hearth that living witness whose blame will most affect
you, to eat, to sleep, to live with your most admiring and thence most
exacting judge, is not this to domesticate the living God? Each becomes
a conscience to the other, legible like a clock upon the chimney-piece.
Each offers to his mate a figure of the consequence of human acts. And
while I may still continue by my inconsiderate or violent life to spread
far-reaching havoc throughout man's confederacy, I can do so