184 MARRIAGE. 



terest, such as cannot take place in any of the other relations of life. 

 The spefl of love is never dissolved by their union, if it exist between 

 them, with virtue, delicacy, personal cleanliness, good nature, and 

 good sense, the charm acquires continually new power the longer 

 they live together. Mutual partiality of esteem are the nectar and 

 ambrosia upon which it feeds and grows, because the virtuous wife 

 knows herself to be dearer and more amiable than all the world be- 

 sides in her husband's eyes, and for that very reason he is dearer and 

 more estimable than all others in the world to her. Their interesting 

 prepossessions tend continually to exalt and influence one another; 

 even the absence of those solicitudes, which are said to be the essence 

 of love, is not sufficient in this case to abate the passion. The habit 

 of affectionate converse, of mutual sympathy, of unreserved confi- 

 dence, of continually leaning, even in thought, the one upon the 

 other for comfort and approbation, enhances mutual endearments 

 more than it is possible for words to express. The feeling that they 

 cannot find happiness but in an entire unity of taste and interests, 

 augments the same effects. They see nothing around them but what 

 is the common wish or choice of both ; they grow together, and their 

 very lives depend one upon the other. The more important and the 

 more interesting to hope and fear the objects of the common regard, 

 so much the more is their conjugal attachment cemented. Children, 

 the pledges of their married endearments, are wards committed by 

 Providence to their common tenderness, prudence, and good faith, 

 by engaging them incessantly in offices of virtuous attention to the 

 same dear objects, still heighten their mutual love. As their children 

 grow up, and are dispersed in the world, they find themselves left 

 in a great measure alone, and are again as it were all in all to each 

 other. Afflictions and indispositions of health endear them to each 

 other ; sympathy, common cares contribute equally to confirm the 

 constancy and fervor of their attachment, and on the last verge of 

 existence they become solicitous not to be left in this world one 

 behind the other. Such is the natural effect of the conjugal union, 

 where its happy effects are not counterbalanced by the views of the 

 parties, such as do not necessarily spring from nor accompany marri- 

 age. But even under all the disadvantages of the ignorances and 

 vices of humanity, in the marriage union are to be found the truest 

 attachment, the highest and most refined social comforts of which 

 there is any example among men. It cannot give to vice and igno- 

 rance all the advantage of virtue; but it often, by enlightening igno- 

 rance and by reforming vice, raises the person whom they debased 

 to a felicity of which they must otherwise have remained incapable. 



