to be accepted in all matters, any more than the flat declaration of a
fact will develop it in alt its bearings. When our English society
shall have advanced to a high civilization, it will be less expansive
in denouncing the higher stupidities. Among us, much of the social
judgement of Bodge upon the relations of men to women is the stereotyped
opinion of the land. There is the dictum here for a man who adores a
woman who is possessed by a husband. If he has long adored her, and
known himself to be preferred by her in innocency of heart; if he has
solved the problem of being her bosom's lord, without basely seeking to
degrade her to being his mistress; the epithets to characterise him in
our vernacular will probably be all the less flattering. Politically we
are the most self-conscious people upon earth, and socially the frankest
animals. The terrorism of our social laws is eminently serviceable, for
without it such frank animals as we are might run into bad excesses.
I judge rather by the abstract evidence than by the examples our fair
matrons give to astounded foreigners when abroad.

Louise writes that her husband is paralysed. The Marquis de Mazardouin
is at last tasting of his mortality. I bear in mind the day when he
married her. She says that he has taken to priestly counsel, and, like
a woman, she praises him for that. It is the one thing which I have
not done to please her. She anticipates his decease. Should she be
free--what then? My heart does not beat the faster for the thought.
There are twenty years upon it, and they make a great load. But I have
a desire that she should come over to us. The old folly might rescue me
from the new one. Not that I am any further persecuted by the dread that
I am in imminent danger here. I have established a proper mastery over
my young lady. 'Nous avons change de role'. Alice is subdued; she laughs
feebly, is becoming conscious--a fact to be regretted, if I desired to
check the creature's growth. There is vast capacity in the girl. She
has plainly not centred her affections upon Charles, so that a man's
conscience might be at ease if--if he chose to disregard what is due to
decency. But, why, when I contest it, do I bow to the world's opinion
concerning disparity of years between husband and wife? I know
innumerable cases of an old husband making a young wife happy. My
friend, Dr. Galliot, married his ward, and he had the best wife of any
man of my acquaintance. She has bee