any
other event of their lives. It is a connexion generally formed by
inexperience, under the blindness and caprice of passion; and, though
these conditions cannot be avoided, as forming the bases of the
connexion, yet it is so important, that a man is never ruined who
has an interesting, faithful, and virtuous wife; while he is lost
to comfort, fortune, and even to hope, who has united himself to
a vicious and unprincipled one. The fate of woman is still more
intimately blended with that of her husband; for, being in the eyes
of the law and the world but second to him, she is the victim of his
follies and vices at home, and of his ill success and degradation
abroad. Rules are useless, where passions, founded on trifling
associations and accidents, govern; but much mischief often results
from fathers expecting young men to be in the social position of
old ones, and from present fortune being preferred to virtues; for
industry and talent, stimulated by affection, and fostered by family
interests, soon create competency and fortune; while a connexion
founded on mere wealth, which is often speedily wasted by dissipation,
habits of extravagance, and the chances of life, necessarily ends in
disappointment, disgust, and misery.

* * * * *

Wretched is the man who has no employment but to watch his own
digestions; and who, on waking in the morning, has no useful
occupation of the day presented to his mind. To such a one respiration
is a toil, and existence a continued disease. Self-oblivion is his
only resource, indulgence in alcohol in various disguises his remedy,
and death or superstition his only comfort and hope. For what was he
born, and why does he live? are questions which he constantly asks
himself; and his greatest enigmas are the smiling faces of habitual
industry, stimulated by the wants of the day, or fears for the future.
If he is excited to exertion, it is commonly to indulge some vicious
propensity, or display his scorn of those pursuits which render others
happier than himself. If he seek to relieve his inanity in books, his
literature ascends no higher than the romances, the newspapers, or the
scandal, of the day; and all the nobler pursuits of mind, as well as
body, are utterly lost in regard to him. His passage through life
is like that of a bird through the air, and his final cause appears
merely to be that of sustaining the worms in his costly tomb.

* *