“Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
“Ease, and alternate labour, useful life,
“Progressive virtue, and approving heaven.”
What a transition is it from what a Shakespear wrote, to what a Handel played! How charming a relaxation from the necessary avocations of business!——“Of business do you say?”---Yes; for I number this too, among the pleasures of the happily married. Let the lady find agreeable employment at home, in the domestic œconomy of her household, but let the gentleman be pursuing by unremitted and honest industry, new comforts for her, for his children, and for himself.
Is there not some gratification too, in reflecting, that the blessings of the marriage state, are more secure and permanent than most others, which fall within the compass of human life?---it is the haven of a sea of gallantries, of turbulence, and fears. Other friendships are seen to fade, to languish, and to die, by removal of abode, by variance of interest, by injuries, or even by mistakes: but this is co-equal with life, the present existence has been called a state of trial, and of preparation for a better, marriage is the perfection of it, here our education is completed, all the sympathies and affections of the citizen, the parent, and the friend, have their fullest spheres assigned them; and, doubtless, that pair, who in this engagement, are truly happy and irreproachable, must have so qualified themselves by a thousand instances of mutual affection and forbearance, for an improved state of manners and society, that they may be pronounced to have reached the pinnacle of human felicity, from whence to Heaven, the transition will neither be difficult nor strange; for that is the home to which the best improvements of social life are only framed to conduct us.---
“Evening comes at last, serene and mild,
“When after the long vernal day of life,
“Enamour’d more, as more remembrance swells,
“With many a proof of recollected love;
“Together down they sink in social sleep;