The freshness of her docile nature demands his first forming cares. As she advances in life she is moulded to happy changes, adapted to supply his defects. She is reared modest, amiable, instructed, respectable, and respected; one day to govern his family, and direct his house, by diffusing around the domestic domain, order and peace. Let neither romances, metaphysics, pedantry nor fashion render a qualification for these important duties, either trifling or vulgar in her view. Still, domestic duties are by no means to occupy all her hours. The time which is not devoted to them will flow quietly on in friendly circles, not numerous, but animated by gayety, friendship and the inexplicable pleasures which spring from intercourse with rational society. There are, also, more unimportant duties, which we expect her not to neglect. We wish her to occupy some moments at a toilet; where simplicity should be the basis of elegance; and where native tact might develope the graces, and vary, and multiply, if I may so say, the forms of her beauty. In fine, the versatility of her modes of rendering herself agreeable, should increase the chances of always escaping ennui in her presence. But train women to visit a library as _savans_, and they will be likely to bring from it pedantry without solid instruction; and coquetry without feminine amiability. I would not be understood to question the capability of the female understanding. I am not sure that I would wish the wife of my friend to have been an author, though some of the most amiable and enlightened women have been such. But I deem that in their mental constitution, and in the assignment of their lot, providence has designated them to prefer the graces to erudition; and that to acquire a wreath of laurels, they must ordinarily relinquish their native crown of roses.[28a] When we see a husband and wife thus united by tenderness, good hearts and simple tastes, everything presages for them a delightful futurity. Let them live contented in their retirement. Instead of wishing to blazon, let them conceal their happiness, and exist for each other. Life will become to them the happiest of dreams. Perhaps the world will say, ‘you speak, it may be, of such a wife as you would be understood to possess yourself. But you do not paint marriage in the abstract, while you thus describe happiness as finding a habitation within the domestic walls, and pain and sorrow without: how many people find eternal ennui at home, and respire pleasure, only when they have fled their own threshold.’ There are few wives so perfect, says La Bruyere, ‘as to hinder their husbands from repenting at least once in a day, that they have a wife; or from envying the happiness of him who has none.’