th
of law and of custom, and marked by such peculiarities that they
constitute a species by themselves. It consists of the friendships
which grow up between husbands and wives, within the shielded
enclosure of matrimony. The community of interests between those
united in wedlock if they are married in truth as well as in form is
the most intimate and entire that can exist.

Their unqualified surrender and blending of lives, unreserved
confidence and conjunction of hearts, afford, on the one hand, the
most hazardous, on the other hand, the most propitious, conditions
for a perfect mutual reflection of souls with all their contents.
Nowhere else has knowledge such free scope, have the inducements for
esteem or contempt such unhampered range, as in this relation. The
inmost secrets of the parties are always exposed to revelation or to
betrayal. Hypocrisy and deception are reduced to the narrowest
limits. Accordingly, both the most absolute antagonism and misery,
and the most absolute sympathy and happiness, are known in the
conjugal union. Milton puts in the mouth of Samson a fearful
expression of the former:

To wear out miserable days, Intangled with a poisonous bosom snake.

Of the latter we have an affecting instance in the historic narrative
of that Italian Countess del Verme, who, losing her husband after an
elysian union for eight years, was so shocked on learning his death,
that she threw herself on his body in a convulsion of grief which
broke her heart, and she instantly died beside him.

Are the parties selfish, unfeeling, ungenuine? Every possible
opportunity is afforded for the base and alien qualities to recognize
each other, and clash or effervesce. Is one wise, aspiring,
magnanimous? the other, foolish, vulgar, revengeful? The yoke, pulled
contrary ways, must gall and irritate. Then the fellowship of husband
and wife is like that of acid and alkali. But, if they are filled
with consecrating tenderness, sweet patience, and earnest purposes,
all possible motives urge them to adjust their characters and conduct
to each other; to tune their intercourse by heavenly laws; to mingle
their experience in one blessed current; to soothe, support, and
beautify each other's being. Then there results a union, including
every faculty, satisfying every want, unparalleled for its integrity
and its blessedness. In such cases as this, it may truly be said,
marriage is the queen of all friendships.

A beautiful example