al world is rarely met with for the reason
that people of genius are rarely met with. A passion which lasts is a
sublime drama acted by two performers of equal talent, a drama in which
sentiments form the catastrophe, where desires are incidents and the
lightest thought brings a change of scene. Now how is it possible, in
this herd of bimana which we call a nation, to meet, on any but rare
occasions, a man and a woman who possess in the same degree the genius
of love, when men of talent are so thinly sown and so rare in all other
sciences, in the pursuit of which the artist needs only to understand
himself, in order to attain success?

Up to the present moment, we have been confronted with making a forecast
of the difficulties, to some degree physical, which two married people
have to overcome, in order to be happy; but what a task would be ours
if it were necessary to unfold the startling array of moral obligations
which spring from their differences in character? Let us cry halt! The
man who is skillful enough to guide the temperament will certainly show
himself master of the soul of another.

We will suppose that our model husband fulfills the primary conditions
necessary, in order that he may dispute or maintain possession of his
wife, in spite of all assailants. We will admit that he is not to be
reckoned in any of the numerous classes of the predestined which we have
passed in review. Let us admit that he has become imbued with the spirit
of all our maxims; that he has mastered the admirable science, some of
whose precepts we have made known; that he has married wisely, that
he knows his wife, that he is loved by her; and let us continue the
enumeration of all those general causes which might aggravate the
critical situation which we shall represent him as occupying for the
instruction of the human race.

MEDITATION VI. OF BOARDING SCHOOLS.

If you have married a young lady whose education has been carried on at
a boarding school, there are thirty more obstacles to your happiness,
added to all those which we have already enumerated, and you are exactly
like a man who thrusts his hands into a wasp's nest.

Immediately, therefore, after the nuptial blessing has been pronounced,
without allowing yourself to be imposed upon by the innocent ignorance,
the frank graces and the modest countenance of your wife, you ought to
ponder well and faithfully follow out the axioms and precepts which we
shall develop in