, I cannot
forbear pitying his wife; and when I meet with an open ingenuous
countenance, I think of the happiness of his friends, his family, and
his relations."

We have given the views of the poet Burns as to the qualities necessary
in a good wife. Let us add the advice given by Lord Burleigh to his son,
embodying the experience of a wise statesman and practised man of the
world. "When it shall please God," said he, "to bring thee to man's
estate, use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife;
for from thence will spring all thy future good or evil. And it is an
action of thy life, like unto a stratagem of war, wherein a man can err
but once.... Enquire diligently of her disposition, and how her parents
have been inclined in their youth. [209] Let her not be poor, how generous
[20well-born] soever; for a man can buy nothing in the market with
gentility. Nor choose a base and uncomely creature altogether for
wealth; for it will cause contempt in others, and loathing in thee.
Neither make choice of a dwarf, or a fool; for by the one thou shalt
beget a race of pigmies, while the other will be thy continual disgrace,
and it will yirke [20irk] thee to hear her talk. For thou shalt find it to
thy great grief, that there is nothing more fulsome [20disgusting] than a
she-fool."

A man's moral character is, necessarily, powerfully influenced by his
wife. A lower nature will drag him down, as a higher will lift him
up. The former will deaden his sympathies, dissipate his energies, and
distort his life; while the latter, by satisfying his affections, will
strengthen his moral nature, and by giving him repose, tend to energise
his intellect. Not only so, but a woman of high principles will
insensibly elevate the aims and purposes of her husband, as one of
low principles will unconsciously degrade them. De Tocqueville was
profoundly impressed by this truth. He entertained the opinion that man
could have no such mainstay in life as the companionship of a wife of
good temper and high principle. He says that in the course of his life,
he had seen even weak men display real public virtue, because they had
by their side a woman of noble character, who sustained them in their
career, and exercised a fortifying influence on their views of public
duty; whilst, on the contrary, he had still oftener seen men of great
and generous instincts transformed into vulgar self-seekers, by contact
with women of narrow natures, devote