ersion, but wastes his days in listless idleness
and his evenings at cards, the only thing in which she takes a lively
interest. His fine mind is, I fear, growing mean and disingenuous. The
gentleness of his temper leads him not only to sacrifice his peace, but
to infringe on his veracity in order to keep her quiet. All the
entertainment he finds at dinner is a recapitulation of the faults of
her maids, or the impertinence of her footmen, or the negligence of her
gardener. If to please her he joins in the censure, she turns suddenly
about, and defends them. If he vindicates them, she insists on their
immediate dismission; and no sooner are they irrevocably discharged,
than she is continually dwelling on their perfections, and then it is
only their successors who have any faults.

"He is now so afraid of her driving out his few remaining old servants,
if she sees his partiality for them, that in order to conceal it, he
affects to reprimand them as the only means for them to secure her
favor. Thus the integrity of his heart is giving way to a petty
duplicity, and the openness of his temper to shabby artifices. He could
submit to the loss of his comfort, but sensibly feels the diminution of
his credit. The loss of his usefulness too is a constant source of
regret. She will not even suffer him to act as a magistrate, lest her
doors should be beset with vagabonds, and her house dirtied by men of
business. If he chance to commend a dish he has tasted at a friend's
house--Yes, every body's things are good but hers, she can never please.
He had always better dine abroad, if nothing is fit to be eaten at home.

"Though poor Stanhope's conduct is so correct, and his attachment to his
wife so notorious, he never ventures to commend any thing that is said
or done by another woman. She has, indeed, no definitive object of
jealousy, but feels an uneasy vague sensation of envy at any thing or
person he admires. I believe she would be jealous of a fine day, if her
husband praised it.

"If a tale reaches her ears of a wife who has failed of her duty, or if
the public newspapers record a divorce, then she awakens her husband to
a sense of his superior happiness, and her own irreproachable virtue. O
Charles, the woman who, reposing on the laurels of her boasted virtue,
allows herself to be a disobliging, a peevish, a gloomy, a discontented
companion, defeats one great end of the institution, which is happiness.
The wife who violates the