The misery of uncongenial relations is caused mainly by the irksome consciousness that they are obliged to live together. "To think that there is so much space upon the earth, that there are so many houses, so many rooms, and yet that I am so unfortunate as to be compelled to live in the same lodging with this uncivilized, ill-conditioned fellow! To think that there are such vast areas of tranquil silence, and yet that I am compelled to hear the voice of that scolding woman!" This is the feeling, and the relief would be temporary separation. In this, as in almost everything that concerns human intercourse, the rich have an immense advantage, as they can take only just so much of each other's society as they find by experience to be agreeable. They can quietly, and without rudeness, avoid each other by living in different houses, and even in the same house they can have different apartments and be very little together. Imagine the difference between two rich brothers, each with his suite of rooms in a separate tower of the paternal castle, and two very poor ones, inconveniently occupying the same narrow, uncomfortable bed, and unable to remain in the wretched paternal tenement without being constantly in each other's way. Between these extremes are a thousand degrees of more or less inconvenient nearness. Solitude is bad for us, but we need a margin of free space. If we are to be crowded let it be as the stars are crowded. They look as if they were huddled together, but every one of them has his own clear space in the illimitable ether. ESSAY VI. FATHERS AND SONS. There is a certain unsatisfactoriness in this relation in our time which is felt by fathers and often avowed by them when they meet, though it does not occupy any conspicuous place in the literature of life and manners. It has been fully treated by M. Legouvé, the French Academician, in his own lively and elegant way; but he gave it a volume, and I must here confine myself to the few points which can be dealt with in the limits of a short Essay. We are in an interregnum between two systems. The old system, founded on the stern authority of the father, is felt to be out of harmony with the amenity of general social intercourse in modern times and also with the increasing gentleness of political governors and the freedom of the governed. It is therefore, by common consent, abandoned. Some new system that may be founded upon a clear intelligence of both the paternal and the filial relations has yet to come into force. Meanwhile, we are trying various experiments, suggested by the different characters and circumstances of fathers and sons, each father trying his own experiments, and we communicate to each other such results as we arrive at.