We have of late years had much amusing and perhaps, in some remote degree, profitable newspaper discussion on the subject of married life, and the respective merits of wives. On the whole, the wife, I think, has fared but badly at the hands of her critics. She is a great grievance to some, it would appear, from the minuteness with which her faults and failings have been enumerated. That she may have her uses has been somewhat grudgingly admitted; that she may in some rare instances sweeten the desert of life for her mate is not absolutely denied; but in the main she is judged to have fallen short--in a word, she is _not_ ideal. Of course such discussion and such verdict is but the froth on a passing wave; still, it serves to illustrate my contention that there is no subject on earth of more surpassing interest to men and women than this very theme we are considering. The men who have written on the subject lay great stress on a loving disposition and an amiable temper, which are indeed two most powerful factors in the scene of wedded happiness. An amiable temper is a gift of God which cannot be too highly prized, since those who have it not must be constantly at war with self. When combined with these sweet qualities is a large meed of common sense, which accepts the inevitable, even if it bring disappointment and disillusionment in its train, with a cheerful philosophy, then is the happiness of married life secured. The buffets of fortune cannot touch it--its house is builded on a rock. It is Lady Henry Somerset, I think, who has said that sentimentality has been from time immemorial the curse of woman. There is a great deal of truth in the remark. We want women to be delivered from this sickly thrall of sentimentality--which word I use as distinct from sentiment, a very different quality indeed; we desire them to take wider, healthier, sounder views of life. In fiction it is no longer considered necessary to bring one's heroine to the very verge of a decline in order to make her interesting; and nobody now has much sympathy with Thackeray's favourite Amelia, and other limp young women who are dissolved in tears on the smallest provocation, sometimes on none at all.