all, there is none to whose poison and infatuation the best of minds
are so liable. Ambition scarce ever produces any evil but when it
reigns in cruel and savage bosoms; and avarice seldom flourishes at
all but in the basest and poorest soil. Love, on the contrary, sprouts
usually up in the richest and noblest minds; but there, unless nicely
watched, pruned, and cultivated, and carefully kept clear of those
vicious weeds which are too apt to surround it, it branches forth into
wildness and disorder, produces nothing desirable, but choaks up and
kills whatever is good and noble in the mind where it so abounds. In
short, to drop the allegory, not only tenderness and good nature, but
bravery, generosity, and every virtue are often made the instruments
of effecting the most atrocious purposes of this all-subduing tyrant.




Chapter ii.

_Which will not appear, we presume, unnatural to all married
readers._


If the table of poor Booth afforded but an indifferent repast to the
colonel's hunger, here was most excellent entertainment of a much
higher kind. The colonel began now to wonder within himself at his not
having before discovered such incomparable beauty and excellence. This
wonder was indeed so natural that, lest it should arise likewise in
the reader, we thought proper to give the solution of it in the
preceding chapter.