s
patience when it meets no contradiction, its humility when it is
surrounded by dependants, and its delicacy in the conversation of the
uninformed. Where the intercourse is very unequal, society is something
worse than solitude.

I had naturally a keen relish for domestic happiness; and this
propensity had been cherished by what I had seen and enjoyed in my
father's family. Home was the scene in which my imagination had pictured
the only delights worthy of a rational, feeling, intellectual, immortal
man:

sole bliss of Paradise
Which has survived the fall.

This inclination had been much increased by my father's turn of
conversation. He often said to me, "I know your domestic propensities;
and I know, therefore, that the whole color of your future life will be,
in a particular manner, determined by the turn of mind of the woman you
may marry. Were you to live in the busy haunts of men; were you of any
profession, or likely to be engaged in public life, though I would still
counsel you to be equally careful in your choice, yet your happiness
would not so immediately, so exclusively depend on the individual
society of a woman, as that of a retired country gentleman must do. A
man of sense who loves home, and lives at home, requires a wife who can
and will be at half the expense of mind necessary for keeping up the
cheerful, animated, elegant intercourse which forms so great a part of
the bond of union between intellectual and well-bred persons. Had your
mother been a woman of an uninformed, inelegant mind, virtuous and
pious as she is, what abatement must there have been in the blessings of
my lot! The _exhibiting_, the _displaying_ wife may entertain your
company, but it is only the informed, the refined, the cultivated woman
who can entertain yourself; and I presume whenever you marry you will
marry primarily for yourself, and not for your friends; you will want a
COMPANION: an ARTIST you may hire.

"But remember, Charles, that when I am insisting so much on mental
delicacy, I am assuming that all is right in still more essential
points. Do not be contented with this superstructure, till you have
ascertained the solidity of the foundation. The ornaments which decorate
do not support the edifice! Guarded as you are by Christian principles,
and confirmed in virtuous habits, I trust you may safely look abroad
into the world. Do not, however, irrevocably dispose of your affections
till you hav