estrained by the law: I know
that nobles, if not thus restrained by positive law, are restrained, in
fact, by the very nature of their order. And here is a disadvantage
which, as far as real enjoyment of life is concerned, more than
counterbalances all the advantages that they possess over the rest of
the community. This disadvantage, generally speaking, pursues rank and
riches downwards, till you approach very nearly to that numerous class
who live by manual labour, becoming, however, less and less as you
descend. You generally find even very vulgar rich men making a sacrifice
of their natural and rational taste to their mean and ridiculous pride,
and thereby providing for themselves an ample supply of misery for life.
By preferring '_provident_ marriages' to marriages of love, they think
to secure themselves against all the evils of poverty; but, _if poverty
come_, and come it may, and frequently does, in spite of the best laid
plans, and best modes of conduct; _if poverty come_, then where is the
counterbalance for that ardent mutual affection, which troubles, and
losses, and crosses always increase rather than diminish, and which,
amidst all the calamities that can befall a man, whispers to his heart,
that his best possession is still left him unimpaired? The
WORCESTERSHIRE BARONET, who has had to endure the sneers of fools on
account of his marriage with a beautiful and virtuous servant maid,
would, were the present ruinous measures of the Government to drive him
from his mansion to a cottage, still have a source of happiness; while
many of those, who might fall in company with him, would, in addition to
all their other troubles, have, perhaps, to endure the reproaches of
wives to whom poverty, or even humble life, would be insupportable.

86. If marrying for the sake of money be, under any circumstances,
despicable, if not disgraceful; if it be, generally speaking, a species
of legal prostitution, only a little less shameful than that which,
under some governments, is openly licensed for the sake of a tax; if
this be the case generally, what ought to be said of a young man, who,
in the heyday of youth, should couple himself on to a libidinous woman,
old enough, perhaps, to be his grandmother, ugly as the nightmare,
offensive alike to the sight and the smell, and who should pretend to
_love_ her too: and all this merely for the sake of her money? Why, it
ought, and it, doubtless, would be said of him, that his condu