(53:2 Aphorisms on Man. [[DEC. 



times the rapidity, is never once hinted at. Eve's apple, the torch of 

 Prometheus, anil Pandora's box, are discarded as childish fables by our 

 wise moderns. 



XLIV. 



As I write this, I hear out of the window a man beating his wife and 

 calling her names. Is this what is meant by good-nature and domestic 

 comfort ? Or is it that we have so little of these, ordinarily speaking, 

 that we are astonished at the smallest instances of them ; and have never 

 done lauding ourselves for the exclusive possession of them ? 



XLV. 



A man should never marry beneath his own rank in life -for love. 1^ 

 shews goodness of heart, but want of consideration; and the very 

 generosity of purpose will defeat itself. She may please him and be 

 every way qualified to make him happy : but what will others think ? 

 Can he with equal certainty of the issue introduce her to his friends and 

 family ? If not,, nothing is done ; for marriage is an artificial institu- 

 tion, and a wife a part of the machinery of society. We are not in a 

 state of nature, to be quite free and unshackled to follow our spontaneous 

 impulses. Nothing can reconcile the difficulty but a woman's being a 

 paragon of wit or beauty ; but every man fancies his Dulcinea a paragon 

 of wit or beauty. Without this, he will only (with the best intentions in 

 the world) have entailed chagrin and mortification both on himself and 

 her j and she will be as much excluded from society as if he had made 

 her his mistress instead of his wife. She must either mope at home, or 

 tie him to her apron-string ; and he will drag a clog and a load through 

 life, if he be not saddled with a scold and a tyrant to boot. 



XL VI. 



I believe in the theoretical benevolence, and practical malignity of 

 man. 



XL VII. 



We pity those who lived three hundred years ago, as if the world was 

 hardly then awake, and they were condemned to feel their way and drag 

 out an inanimate existence in the obscure dawn of manners and civiliza- 

 tion : we forsooth are at the meridian, and the ages that are to follow are 

 dark night. But if there were any truth in our theory, we should be as 

 much behind-hand and objects of scorn to those who are to come after 

 us, as we have a fancied advantage over those that have preceded us. 

 Supposing it to be a misfortune to have lived in the age of Raphael or 

 Virgil, it would be desirable (if it were possible) still to postpone the 

 period of our existence sine die : for the value of time must mount up, 

 as it proceeds, through the positive, comparative, and superlative 

 degrees. Common sense with a little reflection will teach us, that one 

 age is as good as another ; that in familiar phrase we cannot have our 

 cake and eat it ; and that there is no time like the time present, whether 

 in the first, the tenth or the twentieth century. 



