The real evil of country life I apprehend is this: the whole happiness or misery of it is so terribly dependent on the character of those with whom we live that, if we are not so fortunate as to have for our companions the best and dearest, wisest and pleasantest, of men and women (in which case we may be far happier than in any other life in the world), we are infinitely worse off than we can ever be in town. One, two, or perhaps three relatives and friends, who form our permanent housemates, make or mar all our days by their good or evil tempers, their agreeability or stupidity, their affection and confidence, or their dislike and jealousy. _Être avec les gens qu’on aime, cela suffit_, says Rousseau; and he speaks truth. But _être avec les gens qu’on n’aime pas_, and buried in a dull country house with them, without any prospect of change, is as bad as having a millstone tied round our necks and being drowned in the depth of the sea. In a town house, if the fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, scold and wrangle, if the husband be a bear or the wife a shrew, there is always the refuge of the outer circle of acquaintances wherein cheer and comfort, or, at least, variety and relief, may be found. Reversing the pious Dr. Watts’s maxim, we cry,— “Whatever brawls disturb the home, Let peace be in the street.” The Club is the shelter of henpecked man; a friend’s house, or Marshall and Snellgrove’s, the refuge of a cockpecked woman. On the stormiest domestic debate, the advent of a visitor intervenes, throwing temporary oil on the waters, and compelling the belligerents to put off their quarrels and put on their smiles; and, when the unconscious peacemaker has departed, it is often found difficult, if not impossible, to take up the squabble just where it was left off. But there is no such luck for cross-grained people in country houses. Humboldt’s “Cosmos” contains several references to certain observations made by two gentlemen who passed a winter together on the inhospitable northern shores of Asia, and one of whom bore the alarming name of Wrangle. It is difficult to imagine any trial more severe than that of spending the six dark months of the year with Wrangle on the Siberian coast of the Polar Sea. But this is a mere fancy sketch, whereas hundreds of unlucky English men and women spend their winters every year in country houses, limited, practically, to the society of a Mr. or a Mrs. Wrangle who makes life a burden by everlasting fault-finding, squabbling, worry, suspicion, jar, and jolt. As regards children or dependent people or the wives of despotic husbands, the case is often worse than this. By a terrible law of our nature, an unkindness, harshness, or injustice done once to any one has a frightful tendency to produce hatred of the victim (I have elsewhere called the passion _heteropathy_) and a restlessness to heap wrong on wrong, and accusation upon accusation, to justify the first fault.