very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to
tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the
less they hung it round with frippery romance, like the children of the
happiest fortune, and talked of "the dear cottage where so many joyful
hours had flown." Well, this thatching of hovels is the custom of the
country. Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion.
Being fascinated, they fascinate. They see through Claude-Lorraines. And
how dare anyone, if he could, pluck away the _coulisses_, stage-effects,
and ceremonies, by which they live? Too pathetic, too pitiable, is the
region of affection, and its atmosphere always liable to _mirage_.

We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages. We live amid
hallucinations; and this especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with,
and all are tripped up first or last. But the mighty Mother who had been
so sly with us, as if she felt that she owed us some indemnity, insinuates
into the Pandora-box of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and some
great joys. We find a delight in the beauty and happiness of children that
makes the heart too big for the body. In the worst-assorted connections
there is ever some mixture of true marriage. Teague and his jade get some
just relations of mutual respect, kindly observation, and fostering of
each other, learn something, and would carry themselves wiselier, if they
were now to begin.

'Tis fine for us to point at one or another fine madman, as if there were
any exempts. The scholar in his library is none. I, who have all my life
heard any number of orations and debates, read poems and miscellaneous
books, conversed with many geniuses, am still the victim of any new page;
and, if Marmaduke, or Hugh, or Moosehead, or any other, invent a new style
or mythology, I fancy that the world will be all brave and right if
dressed in these colors, which I had not thought of. Then at once I will
daub with this new paint: but it will not stick. 'Tis like the cement
which the peddler sells at the door; he makes broken crockery hold with
it, but you can never buy of him a bit of the cement which will make it
hold when he is gone.

Men who make themselves felt in the world avail themselves of a certain
fate in their constitution, which they know how to use. But they never
deeply interest us, unless they lift a corner of the curtain, or betray
never so slightly their penetration of w