"My dear aunt, you mistake me: as much sense as you like; and you cannot imagine that I could be such a barbarian as to fancy that any man who married one of my cousins should be so deficient in good taste as not to love her as well as men generally love their wives. Remember, that the happiest home of infancy must, in the course of nature, dissolve; and then what becomes of a luckless sisterhood of old maids, who, having suffered the spring and summer to pass by unheeded, in vain deplore their idle improvidence, and fret away the gloomy remnant of their days on earth in sourness and solitude?" "A dismal picture, indeed," replied my aunt, "I must try if I cannot draw one less dispiriting. In the first place you acknowledge that, according to _your_ scheme, sense and affection, though not _principals_, are useful _accessories_, and are to be taken as make-weights into the scale of happiness. Now my idea is, that this is to expect too much, and more than experience will realize, unless in some instance perhaps of extraordinary exception upon which we have no right to calculate. If you marry for rank, you _obtain_ it, and should be satisfied with your bargain; if for fortune, you have gained your object, and must not complain: the contract is fair, though you receive only that for which you make your agreement; and it is quite unjust to suppose that perfections which you never sought, and qualities of which you never went in search, will be added to heap up your measure." "The happiest home of early life must in nature's course dissolve, you say: agreed; but, the affrighting scene of unavailing misery which you have painted, is not the necessary consequence of such an event. _I_ can imagine three sisters who may not have been tempted to quit the paternal roof by meeting such congeniality of character as they deemed essential to happiness, living together as kindly in the decline, as in the meridian of life. I can imagine them to look abroad without envy, and at home without disgust. If excluded from some enjoyments which belong to another mode of existence, they are spared also many of the evils which attach to it, and with this advantage, that while the former are precarious, the latter are inevitable. The brightest anticipations founded on the most apparently stable foundation, may _possibly_ deceive, but the physical suffering, and the anxious care which are inseparable from the maternal relation, are penalties from which there is no exemption. No bill of indemnity can set aside a mother's pangs; and be assured, that were women endowed with the gift of oracular foresight, and like the ancient Sybils capable of peeping into the cup of futurity, very few would have courage to taste the bitter draught which marriage too frequently mingles to allure by promises, and poison by disappointment. The fondest affection, the kindest support, and all the inestimable charms of sympathetic companionship, may indeed render the conjugal union an antepast