We are now to enter on a most important part of our subject. Hitherto it had been my object to point out the proper course for you to pursue in reference to yourself, your own improvement, and consequent usefulness. In the remarks of the preceding chapter, and in those which follow, you are regarded as seeking a companion; as anxious to assume new relations, such as involve new duties and new responsibilities.
If you are successful, instead of educating yourself alone, you are to be concerned in improving the mental, moral, and social condition of two persons; and in the end, perhaps others. You are to be a teacher; you cannot avoid this station if you would. But you are also to be a learner. Dr. Rush says we naturally imitate the manners, and gradually acquire the tempers of persons with whom we live, provided they are objects of our affection and respect. 'This,' he adds, 'has been observed in husbands and wives who have lived long and happily together; and even in servants.' And nothing can be more true.
Not only your temper and that of your companion, but your whole character, considered as physical, mental, and moral beings, will be mutually improved or injured through life. You will be placed, as I have already intimated, at a school of mutual instruction, which is to continue without vacation or change of monitors,—perhaps half a century;—during every one of the earliest years of which, your character will be more really and more permanently modified than in the same amount of time at any prior period of your education, unless it were in the veriest infancy.
Surely then it is no light affair to make preparation for a school like this. There is no period in the life of a young man so important; for there is none on which his happiness and the happiness of others so essentially depend.
Before I advert to the particular qualifications which it is necessary for you to seek in so intimate a friend, I shall mention a few considerations of a general nature.
Settle it, in the first place, that absolute perfection is not to be found. There are not a few young men of a romantic turn of mind, fostered and increased by reading the fictitious writings of the day, who have pictured to themselves for companions in life unreal forms and angelic characters, instead of beings who dwell in 'houses of clay,' and are 'crushed before the moth.' Such 'exalted imaginations' must sooner or later be brought down: happy will it be with those who are chastened in due season.
In the second place, resolve never to be misled by any adventitious circumstances. Wealth, beauty, rank, friends, &c, are all proper considerations, but they are not of the first importance. They are merely secondary qualifications. Marriage must never be a matter of bargain and sale; for
In the third place, no marriage engagement should ever be thought of unless there is first a genuine and rational attachment. No cold calculations of profit or loss, no hereditary estates or other adventitious circumstances, though they were equivalent to a peerage, or a realm, should ever, for one moment, even in thought, be substituted for love. It is treason to Him who ordained this most blessed institution.
But fourthly, though wealth, however valuable in itself, is by no means a recommendation in the present case, yet the means of a comfortable support are certainly to be regarded. It is painful to see a very young couple, with a large family, and destitute of the means of support.
In the fifth place, a suitable age is desirable.