It is a truth that ought not to be contested, that dissatisfied husbands and wives often love each other more than they imagine. Suppose them to believe themselves indifferent; and to seem so; and even on the verge of mutual hate; should one of them fall sick, we see the other inspired with sincere alarms. Suppose them on the eve of separation; when the fatal moment comes, both recoil from the act. Habit almost causes the pains, to which we have been long accustomed, to become cause of regret when they cease. When the two begin mutually to complain of their destiny, I counsel each, instead of wishing to criminate and correct each other, to give each other an example of mutual forbearance and indulgence. It may be, that the cause of their mutual dissatisfaction is unreal; the supposed wrong not intended, the suspicion false. Candor and forgiveness will appease all. The husband may have gone astray only in thought; which is beyond human privilege to fathom. The wife may have minor defects and an unequal temper, without forfeiting much excellence and many remaining claims to be loved. The morbid influence of ill health and irresistible temperament, in their powerful action upon the temper, may have been the source whence the faults flowed on either part; and the mutual wrongs may thus have been, in some sense, independent of the will of the parties. Bound, as they are, in such intimate and almost indissoluble relations, before they give that happiness, which they hoped and promised, to the winds, let them exhaust their efforts of self-command and mutual indulgence, to bring back deep and true affection. The purest happiness of earth is, unquestionably, the portion of two beings wisely and fitly united in the bonds of indissoluble confidence and affection. What a touching picture does Madame de Stael present in these lines: ‘I saw, during my sojourn in England, a man of the highest merit united to a wife worthy of him. One day, as we were walking together, we met some of those people that the English call gipseys, who generally wander about in the woods in the most deplorable condition. I expressed pity for them thus enduring the union of all the physical evils of nature. “Had it been necessary,” said the affectionate husband, pointing to his wife, “in order to spend my life with her, that I should have passed thirty years in begging with them, we would still have been happy.” “Yes,” responded the wife, “the happiest of beings.”’ LETTER XV. CHILDREN. One of the happiest days, and, perhaps, the most beautiful of life, is when the birth of a child opens the heart of the parent to emotions, as yet, unknown.[31] Yet what torments are prepared by this epoch! What painful anxiety, what agonies their sufferings excite! What terror, when we fear for their infant life! These alarms terminate not with their early age. The inquietude with which their parents watch over their destiny fills every period of their life to their last sigh.