But on the other hand if love, simple love, is the worst of poets, that same simple love, is beyond comparison the best of letter writers. In love poems conceits are distilled from the head; in love letters feelings flow from the heart; and feelings are never so feelingly uttered, affection never so affectionately expressed, truth never so truly spoken, as in such a correspondence. Oh if the disposition which exists at such times, were sustained through life, marriage would then be indeed the perfect union, the “excellent mystery” which our Father requires from those who enter into it, that it should be made; and which it might always be, under His blessing, were it not for the misconduct of one or the other party, or of both. If such a disposition were maintained,—“if the love of husbands and wives were grounded (as it then would be) in virtue and religion, it would make their lives a kind of heaven on earth; it would prevent all those contentions and brawlings which are the great plagues of families, and the lesser hell in passage to the greater.” Let no reader think the worse of that sentence because it is taken from that good homely old book, the better for being homely, entitled the Whole Duty of Man. [Footnote 2: SCAURANUS.] [Footnote 3: SHAKESPEARE.] [Footnote 4: JOACHIM DU BELLAY.] I once met with a book in which a servant girl had written on a blank leaf, “_not much love after marriage, but a good deal before!_” In her station of life this is but too true; and in high stations also, and in all those intermediate grades where either the follies of the world, or its cares, exercise over us an unwholesome influence. But it is not so with well constituted minds in those favorable circumstances wherein the heart is neither corrupted by wealth, nor hardened by neediness. So far as the tendency of modern usages is to diminish the number of persons who are thus circumstanced, in that same proportion must the sum of happiness be diminished, and of those virtues which are the only safeguard of a nation. And that modern policy and modern manners have this tendency, must be apparent to every one who observes the course both of public and private life. This girl had picked up a sad maxim from the experience of others; I hope it did not as a consequence, make her bestow too much love before marriage herself, and meet with too little after it. I have said much of worthless verses upon this subject; take now, readers, some that may truly be called worthy of it. They are by the Manchester Poet, Charles Swain. 1.