ery-day pleasure, how much more will _she_ learn to prize and
cultivate those gifts which form the charm of her nature, and breathe
an incense of fascination around her steps. Here is a compact where
both parties benefit, but that they may do so to the fullest extent,
it is necessary that no self-interest, no mean prospect of individual
advantage, should interfere: all must be pure and confiding.
Love-making should not be like a game of _ecarte_ with a black leg,
where you must not rise from the table, till you are ruined. No! it
should rather resemble a party at picquet with your pretty cousin,
when the moment either party is tired, you may throw down the cards
and abandon the game.

[Illustration]

This, then, is the case of the man; he either discovers that on
further acquaintance the qualities he believed in were not so palpable
as he thought, or, if there, marred in their exercise by opposing and
antagonist forces, of whose existence he knew not, he thinks he
detects discrepancies of temperament, disparities of taste; he
foresees that in the channel where he looked for deep water there are
so many rocks, and shoals, and quicksands, that he fears the bark of
conjugal happiness may be shipwrecked upon them; and, like a prudent
mariner, he resolves to lighten the craft by "throwing over the lady."
Had this man married with all these impending suspicions on his mind,
there is little doubt he would have made a most execrable husband; not
to mention the danger that his wife should not be all amiable as she
ought. He stops short--that is, he explains in one, perhaps in a
series of letters, the reasons of his new course. He expects in return
the admiration and esteem of her, for whose happiness he is
legislating, as well as for his own; and oh, base ingratitude! he
receives a letter from her attorney. The gentlemen of the long
robe--newspaper again--are in ecstasies. Like devils on the arrival of
a new soul, they brighten up, rub their hands, and congratulate each
other on a glorious case. The damages are laid at five thousand
pounds; and, as the lady is pretty, and can be seen from the jury-box,
being fathers themselves, they award every sixpence of the money.

I can picture to myself the feeling of the defendant at such a moment
as this. As he stands alone in conscious honesty, ruminating on his
fate--alone, I say, for, like Mahomet's coffin, he has no
resting-place; laughed at by the men, sneered at by the women, mul