exalted, and soul
mastering sentiments appear to them impossible within the bounds of
moral laws and social conventions. All order seems to them a
paralyzing yoke, all submission a debasing servitude: no flame is any
thing, if it is not a devouring conflagration. This disease is the
graver because it is not the crisis of a fever nor the explosion of
an exuberant force. It springs from perverse doctrines, from the
rejection of law and faith, from the idolatry of man. And with this
disease there is joined another no less lamentable: man not only
adores nothing but himself, but even himself he adores only in the
multitude where all men are confounded. He hates and envies every
thing that rises above the vulgar level: all superiority, all
individual grandeur, seems to him an iniquity, an injury towards that
chaos of undistinguished and ephemeral beings whom he calls humanity.
When we have been assailed by these base doctrines, and the shameful
passions which give birth to or are born from them; when we have felt
the hatefullness of them, and measured the peril, it is a lively
delight to meet with one of those noble examples which are their
splendid confutation. In proportion as I respect humanity in its
totality, I admire and love those glorified images of humanity which
personify and set on high, under visible features and with a proper
name, whatever it has of most noble and most pure. Lady Russell gives
the soul this beautiful and virtuous joy."

It is fitting, in the next place, to say something of the
disappointment and wretchedness which so many married men and women
notoriously experience in their relations with each other. It may be
useful to state the principal causes of this unhappiness, and to give
some definite directions in the way of remedy. Absence of love,
absence of reason, absence of justice, absence of taste, in other
words, harshness and neglect, silliness and frivolity, vice and
crime, vulgarity and slovenliness, are the leading and inevitable
creators of alienation, dislike, and misery in marriage. Whatever
tends to increase these tends to multiply separations and divorces
between those who cannot endure each other; and to multiply
irritations, quarrels, sorrows, and agonies between those who may
endure, but cannot enjoy, each other. In marriage, the intimacy is so
great and constant that the slightest friction easily becomes
galling. Nowhere beside is there such need of magnanimous forbearance
in on