with joy and gratitude when he returns in the evening to his ivy-mantled
cottage, and finds his wife assiduously engaged in the household duties
of his family. And it soothes the mind of the lunatic during the lucid
intervals of the aberration of his intellects, and tends more than
anything else to restore him to reason. In fact, there is no calamity
that is incident to man, but that female constancy will assuage. Whether
in sickness or health, in prosperity or poverty, in mirth or sadness,
(vicissitudes which form the common lot of mankind in their pilgrimage
through this life;) the loveliness of this inestimable blessing will
shine forth, like the sun on a misty morning, and preserve the even
temperature of the mind. To the youthful lover it is the polar star that
guides him from the shoals and quicksands of vice, among which his
wayward fancy and inexperience are too apt to lead him. But in the
matrimonial state, the pleasures arising from the exercise of this
virtue are manifold, as it sheds a galaxy of splendour around the social
hemisphere; for it is such a divine perfection, that Solomon has wisely
observed, that

"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband."

A husband so blessed in marriage, might exclaim with the lover in one of
Terence's comedies, "I protest solemnly that I will never forsake her;
no, not if I was sure to contract the enmity of mankind by this
resolution. Her I made the object of my wishes, and have obtained her;
our dispositions suit; and I will shake hands with them that would sow
dissension betwixt us; for death, and only death, shall take her from
me."

The eulogies of the poets in regard to this amiable trait in the female
character, are sublime and beautiful; but none, I think, have surpassed