But, perhaps, the reader will not be displeased if we introduce dramatically upon the scene an Athenian married pair discussing in his presence a question closely connected with domestic happiness. There is little risk of exaggeration. The picture is by Xenophon, a writer whose subdued and sober colouring is calculated rather to diminish than otherwise the poetical features of his subject. By Heaven! exclaimed Socrates, according to this account, your wife’s understanding must be of a highly masculine character. Nay, but suffer me, answered the husband, to place before you a convincing proof of her high-mindedness, by showing how, on a single representation, she yielded to me on a subject extremely important. Proceed, cried the philosopher, (who had not found Xantippe thus manageable,) proceed; for, believe me, friend, I experience much greater delight in contemplating the active virtues of a living woman, than the most exquisite female form by the pencil of Zeuxis would afford me. Observing, said Ischomachos, that my wife sought by cosmetics[98] and other arts of the toilette to render herself fairer and ruddier than she had issued from the hands of Nature, and that she wore high-heeled shoes in order to add to her stature,—Tell me, wife,[99] I began, would you now esteem me to be a worthy participator of your fortunes if, concealing the true state of my affairs, I aimed at appearing richer than I am, by exhibiting to you heaps of false money, necklaces of gilded wood for gold, and wardrobes of spurious for genuine purple? ----- Footnote 98: Xen. Œcon. x. ii. 60. Among the Orientals we find there existed a peculiar collyrium for the white of the eye. Bochart, Hieroz, Pt. ii. p. 120. Footnote 99: Γύναι, a term of greatest endearment among the Greeks, as with the French “ma femme.” On this point our language is more sophisticated. The practice reprehended by Ischomachos, in the text, was generally prevalent in Greece, where certain classes of the community, who could afford nothing better, used, when they had painted the rest of their skin white, to dye the cheeks with mulberry-juice, and paint the eyelids black at the edge. In hot weather, therefore, dusky streamlets sometimes flowed from the corners of their eyes; and the roses melted from their cheeks, and dropped into their bosoms. They imitated old age, too, by covering their hair with white powder. (Athen. xiii. 6.) It was likewise, at one time, the fashion to bring forward their curls so as to conceal the forehead, as was the practice in France and England during a part of the eighteenth century.—Lucian, Dial. Meret. i. t. iv. p. 123. ----- Nay, exclaimed my wife, interrupting me, put not the injurious supposition: it is what you could not be guilty of. For, were such your character I could never love you from my soul. Well, by entering together into the bonds of marriage are we not mutually invested with a property in each other’s persons?