The infelicities and disorders of family life, which only prefigure the inevitable confusion and evils of the whole Society, are more intolerable among the Middle Castes. In the _Highest, secured revenues_ enable the wife and the husband each to see as little of each other as they please; and so long as the husband is not stirred up by _Mrs. Grundy_ (who is not severe with this Caste) he cares but little what his wife may do. _He_ goes about his sports and his pleasures as he pleases; and his wife, not wishing to be looked after, does not look after him. On this free-and-easy footing, with no want of money (_Mrs. Grundy's decorum_ being observed), they get on well enough, and may even form quite a friendship for each other. But it is not possible to establish this condition in a family of small income--and here it is that the wretchedness of false principles has full scope. The husband and father, honest and good, finds himself mated to a woman, weak and vain, with children moulded by her. He, misled by false notions and ignorance, took to his heart one whom he fully trusted as simply true and modest; he took her for herself and without money, and flattered himself that she would be a helper and solace. She and her children have made him a miserable _slave_, who finds no quiet unless he satisfy all their clamorous demands--_to shine in Society_! If a good man, he tries to obey and live, even under exactions beyond his utmost efforts; for he has learned to see that his wife, though weak, is no worse than the Society which she loves, and which he also cannot escape; he is merely in a false position, and must largely thank himself for having heedlessly entered upon it! But this kind of man is not universal, and one may judge what follows, where there is a man who will not yield, or yields only because he no longer cares for anything but his personal ease and indulgence--seeking for pleasure, though unlawful, abroad, as the only recompense attainable for the loss of happiness at home! Such a man feels that life is insupportable, where he makes so wretched an object--to be merely the _mute beast_ of burden for the family, without receiving so much tenderness and consideration as is accorded to the dogs lolling in the lazy laps of the females of the house! He seeks, therefore, abroad for some means of enjoyment, though illicit! This sort of picture is to be seen everywhere in the Barbarian _Literature_, and is constantly shown in all its minute and miserable exhibition at the Courts of Divorce.