ected to the same path,
and it will not often happen, that either will quit the track which
custom has made pleasing. When the desultory levity of youth has settled
into regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride, ashamed to yield, or
obstinacy, delighting to contend. And, even though mutual esteem
produces mutual desire to please, time itself, as it modifies
unchangeably the external mien, determines, likewise, the direction of
the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to the manners. Long
customs are not easily broken: he that attempts to change the course of
his own life, very often labours in vain; and how shall we do that for
others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves!"

"But, surely," interposed the prince, "you suppose the chief motive of
choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I shall seek a wife, it shall be
my first question, whether she be willing to be led by reason."

"Thus it is," said Nekayah, "that philosophers are deceived. There are a
thousand familiar disputes, which reason can never decide; questions
that elude investigation, and make logick ridiculous; cases where
something must be done, and where little can be said. Consider the state
of mankind, and inquire how few can be supposed to act, upon any
occasions, whether small or great, with all the reasons of action
present to their minds. Wretched would be the pair, above all names of
wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason, every morning,
all the minute detail of a domestick day.

"Those who marry at an advanced age, will, probably, escape the
encroachments of their children; but, in diminution of this advantage,
they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helpless, to a
guardian's mercy; or, if that should not happen, they must, at least, go
out of the world, before they see those whom they love best, either wise
or great.

"From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less also to
hope; and they lose, without equivalent, the joys of early love, and the
convenience of uniting with manners pliant, and minds susceptible of new
impressions, which might wear away their dissimilitudes by long
cohabitation, as soft bodies, by continual attrition, conform their
surfaces to each other.

"I believe it will be found, that those who marry late, are best pleased
with their children, and those who marry early with their partners."

"The union of these two affections," said Rasselas, "would produce all
that co