I should like to believe that there are many such,
especially among my listeners, but I should think it a miracle if
one of them united all these qualities without having the
principles of religion. A woman, pretty, witty, agreeable, would
like her husband to think she was so, that he should be as amiable
for her, or almost, as for those he saw for the first time; that
he should not keep his ill humor and his brusqueness for his home
and lavish his care and attention on society; that he should
forget sometimes that he is a master,--in some ways a despotic
master,--despite the liberalism of the century and the progress of
philosophy; that he should be willing to be a friend, even if he
ceased to be a lover; finally, that he should not seek from others
what he will more surely find at home. Let this tender wife invoke
religion, let her cause her husband to love it, let her win him to
it; she will get what she hopes for and thank me for the recipe."
Our lady readers will thank us, we hope, for having spoken of a
man who gives them such good advice; and it is with pleasure that
we have taken the occasion to render homage to the memory of a
great lord, who doubly deserved the title, by the elevation of his
ideas and the nobility of his sentiments. Such men--alas! they are
rare--would have saved the Restoration if the Restoration could
have been saved.
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