cted
of perhaps half his fortune, merely because for the last three years
of his life he represented himself in every amiable and attractive
trait that can grace and adorn human nature. Who would wonder, if,
like the man in the farce, he would register a vow never to do a
good-natured thing again as long as he lives; or what respect can he
have for a government or a country, where the church tells him to love
his neighbour, and the chief justice makes him pay five thousand for
his obedience.

I now come to the other case, and I shall be very brief in my
observations. I mean that of him, who equally fond of flirting as the
former, has yet a lively fear of an action at law. Love-making with
him is a necessity of his existence--he is an Irishman, perhaps, and
it is as indispensable to his temperament as train-oil to a Russian.
He likes sporting, he likes billiards, he likes his club, and he likes
the ladies; but he has just as much intention of turning a huntsman at
the one, or a marker at the other, as he has of matrimony. He knows
life is a chequered table, and that there could be no game if all the
squares were of one colour. He alternates, therefore, between love and
sporting, between cards and courtship, and as the pursuit is a
pleasant one, he resolves never to give up. He waxes old, therefore,
with young habits, adapting his tastes to his time of life; he does
not kneel so often at forty as he did at twenty, but he ogles the
more, and is twice as good-tempered. Not perhaps as ready to fight for
the lady, but ten times more disposed to flatter her. She may love
him, or she may not; she may receive him as of old, or she may marry
another. What matters it to him? All his care is that _he_ shouldn't
change. All his anxiety is, to let the rupture, if there must be one,
proceed from _her_ side. He knows in his heart the penalty of breach
of promise, but he also knows that the Chancellor can issue no
injunction compelling a man to marry, and that in the courts of love
the bills are payable at convenience.

Here, then, are the two cases, which, in conformity with the world's
opinion, I have dignified with every possible term of horror and
reproach. In the one, the measure of iniquity is but half filled; in
the other, the cup is overflowing at the brim. For the lesser offence,
the law awards damages and defamation: for the greater, society
pronounces an eulogy upon the enduring fidelity of the man thus
faithful to a first