mes grow cool in the very honey month. Some separate before the
first child, and some after the fifth; others continue good till thirty,
others till forty; while some few, whose souls are of a happier make,
and better fitted to one another, travel on together to the end of their
journey in a continual intercourse of kind offices and mutual
endearments.

When we therefore choose our companions for life, if we hope to keep
both them and ourselves in good humour to the last stage of it, we must
be extremely careful in the choice we make, as well as in the conduct on
our own part. When the persons to whom we join ourselves can stand an
examination, and bear the scrutiny, when they mend upon our acquaintance
with them, and discover new beauties the more we search into their
characters, our love will naturally rise in proportion to their
perfections.

But because there are very few possessed of such accomplishments of body
and mind, we ought to look after those qualifications both in ourselves
and others, which are indispensably necessary towards this happy union,
and which are in the power of every one to acquire, or at least to
cultivate and improve. These, in my opinion, are cheerfulness and
constancy. A cheerful temper joined with innocence will make beauty
attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured. It will lighten
sickness, poverty, and affliction; convert ignorance into an amiable
simplicity, and render deformity itself agreeable.

Constancy is natural to persons of even tempers and uniform
dispositions, and may be acquired by those of the greatest fickleness,
violence, and passion, who consider seriously the terms of union upon
which they come together, the mutual interest in which they are engaged,
with all the motives that ought to incite their tenderness and
compassion towards those who have their dependence upon them, and are
embarked with them for life in the same state of happiness or misery.
Constancy, when it grows in the mind upon considerations of this nature,
becomes a moral virtue, and a kind of good nature, that is not subject
to any change of health, age, fortune, or any of those accidents which
are apt to unsettle the best dispositions that are founded rather in
constitution than in reason. Where such a constancy as this is wanting,
the most inflamed passion may fall away into coldness and indifference,
and the most melting tenderness degenerate into hatred and aversion. I
shall conclude