nably accommodate their lives with what is in our power. In
order to this, we should not marry so young that our age shall in a
manner be confounded with theirs; for this inconvenience plunges us into
many very great difficulties, and especially the gentry of the nation,
who are of a condition wherein they have little to do, and who live upon
their rents only: for elsewhere, with people who live by their labour,
the plurality and company of children is an increase to the common stock;
they are so many new tools and instruments wherewith to grow rich.

I married at three-and-thirty years of age, and concur in the opinion of
thirty-five, which is said to be that of Aristotle. Plato will have
nobody marry before thirty; but he has reason to laugh at those who
undertook the work of marriage after five-and-fifty, and condemns their
offspring as unworthy of aliment and life. Thales gave the truest
limits, who, young and being importuned by his mother to marry, answered,
"That it was too soon," and, being grown into years and urged again,
"That it was too late." A man must deny opportunity to every inopportune
action. The ancient Gauls' looked upon it as a very horrid thing for a
man to have society with a woman before he was twenty years of age, and
strictly recommended to the men who designed themselves for war the
keeping their virginity till well grown in years, forasmuch as courage is
abated and diverted by intercourse with women:

"Ma, or congiunto a giovinetta sposa,
E lieto omai de' figli, era invilito
Negli affetti di padre et di marito."

["Now, married to a young wife and happy in children, he was
demoralised by his love as father and husband."
--Tasso, Gierus., x. 39.]

Muley Hassam, king of Tunis, he whom the Emperor Charles V. restored to
his kingdom, reproached the memory of his father Mahomet with the
frequentation of women, styling him loose, effeminate, and a getter of
children.--[Of whom he had thirty-four.]--The Greek history observes of
Iccus the Tarentine, of Chryso, Astyllus, Diopompos, and others, that to
keep their bodies in order for the Olympic games and such like exercises,
they denied themselves during that preparation all commerce with Venus.
In a certain country of the Spanish Indies men were not permitted to
marry till after forty age, and yet the girls were allowed at ten.
'Tis not time for a gentleman of thirty years old to gi