INFLUENCE OF MARRIAGE. 279 



c A still more remarkable instance of helpfulness in 

 a wife is presented in the case of Huber, the Geneva 

 naturalist. Huber was blind from his seventeenth year, 

 and yet he found means to study and master a branch of 

 natural history demanding the closest observation and the 

 keenest eyesight. It was through the eyes of his wife 

 that his mind worked as if they had been his own. She 

 encouraged her husband's studies as a means of alleviating 

 his privation, which at length he came to forget ; and his 

 life was as prolonged and happy as is usual with most 

 naturalists. He even went so far as to declare that he 

 should be miserable were he to regain his eyesight. " I 

 should not know," he said, " to what extent a person in 

 my situation could be beloved ; besides, to me my wife is 

 always young, fresh, and pretty, which is no light 

 matter." 



' Not less touching was the devotion of Lady Hamilton 

 to the service of her husband, the late Sir William 

 Hamilton, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the 

 University of Edinburgh. After he had been stricken by 

 paralysis through overwork at the age of fifty-six, she 

 became hands, eyes, mind, and everything to him. She 

 identified herself with his work, read and consulted books 

 for him, copied out and corrected his lectures, and relieved 

 him of all business which she felt herself competent to 

 undertake. Indeed, her conduct as a wife was nothing 

 short of heroic ; and it is probable that but for her devoted 

 and more than wifely help, and her rare practical ability, 

 the greatest of her husband's works would never have seen 

 the light. He was by nature unmethodical and disorderly, 

 and she supplied him with method and orderliness. His 

 temperament was studious but indolent, while she was 

 active and energetic. She abounded in qualities which he 



