with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the
scrupulosity of age. Thus parents and children, for the greatest part,
live on to love less and less: and, if those whom nature has thus
closely united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for
tenderness and consolation?"

"Surely," said the prince, "you must have been unfortunate in your
choice of acquaintance: I am unwilling to believe, that the most tender
of all relations is thus impeded, in its effects, by natural necessity."

"Domestick discord," answered she, "is not inevitably and fatally
necessary; but yet it is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole
family is virtuous: the good and evil cannot well agree: and the evil
can yet less agree with one another: even the virtuous fall, sometimes,
to variance, when their virtues are of different kinds, and tending to
extremes. In general, those parents have most reverence who most deserve
it: for he that lives well cannot be despised.

"Many other evils infest private life. Some are the slaves of servants,
whom they have trusted with their affairs. Some are kept in continual
anxiety, by the caprice of rich relations, whom they cannot please, and
dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious, and some wives perverse:
and, as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom
or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of
one may often make many miserable."

"If such be the general effect of marriage," said the prince, "I shall,
for the future, think it dangerous to connect my interest with that of
another, lest I should be unhappy by my partner's fault."

"I have met," said the princess, "with many who live single for that
reason; but I never found that their prudence ought to raise envy. They
dream away their time without friendship, without fondness, and are
driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by
childish amusements, or vitious delights. They act as beings under the
constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with
rancour, and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home, and
malevolent abroad; and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their
business and their pleasure to disturb that society, which debars them
from its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting sympathy; to be
fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without
tasting the balm of pity