The relation is one of the closest intimacy and confidence, and if the identity of interest between the two partners is not complete, each has an almost immeasurable power of injuring the other. A moral basis of sterling qualities is of capital importance. A true, honest, and trustworthy nature, capable of self-sacrifice and self-restraint, should rank in the first line, and after that a kindly, equable, and contented temper, a power of sympathy, a habit of looking at the better and brighter side of men and things. Of intellectual qualities, judgment, tact, and order are perhaps the most valuable. Above almost all things, men should seek in marriage perfect sanity, and dread everything like hysteria. Beauty will continue to be a delight, though with much diminished power, but grace and the charm of manner will retain their full attraction to the last. They brighten in innumerable ways the little things of life, and life is mainly made up of little things, exposed to petty frictions, and requiring small decisions and small sacrifices. Wide interests and large appreciations are, in the marriage relation, more important than any great constructive or creative talent, and the power to soothe, to sympathise, to counsel, and to endure, than the highest qualities of the hero or the saint. It is by these alone that the married life attains its full measure of perfection. 'Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atrâ Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis.'[69] But while this is true of all marriages, it is obvious that different professions and circumstances of life will demand different qualities. A hard-working labouring man, or a man who, though not labouring with his hands, is living a life of poverty and struggle, will not seek in marriage a type of character exactly the same as a man who is born to a great position, and who has large social and administrative duties to discharge. The wife of a clergyman immersed in the many interests of a parish; the wife of a soldier or a merchant, who may have to live in many lands, with long periods of separation from her husband, and perhaps amid many hardships; the wife of an active and ambitious politician; the wife of a busy professional man incessantly occupied outside his home; the wife of a man whose health or business or habits keep him constantly in his house, will each need some special qualities. There are few things in which both men and women naturally differ more than in the elasticity and adaptiveness of their natures, in their power of bearing monotony, in the place which habit, routine, and variety hold in their happiness; and in different kinds of life these things have very different degrees of importance. Special family circumstances, such as children by a former marriage, or difficult and delicate relations with members of the family of one partner, will require the exercise of special qualities. Such relations, indeed, are often one of the most