painters may work out of doors; and the fresh air, the
deliberate seasons, and the "tranquillising influence" of the
green earth, counterbalance the fever of thought, and keep
them cool, placable, and prosaic.

A ship captain is a good man to marry if it is a marriage
of love, for absences are a good influence in love and keep it
bright and delicate; but he is just the worst man if the
feeling is more pedestrian, as habit is too frequently torn
open and the solder has never time to set. Men who fish,
botanise, work with the turning-lathe, or gather sea-weeds,
will make admirable husbands and a little amateur painting in
water-colour shows the innocent and quiet mind. Those who
have a few intimates are to be avoided; while those who swim
loose, who have their hat in their hand all along the street,
who can number an infinity of acquaintances and are not
chargeable with any one friend, promise an easy disposition
and no rival to the wife's influence. I will not say they are
the best of men, but they are the stuff out of which adroit
and capable women manufacture the best of husbands. It is to
be noticed that those who have loved once or twice already are
so much the better educated to a woman's hand; the bright boy
of fiction is an odd and most uncomfortable mixture of shyness
and coarseness, and needs a deal of civilising. Lastly (and
this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a
teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke. It is not for
nothing that this "ignoble tabagie," as Michelet calls it,
spreads over all the world. Michelet rails against it because
it renders you happy apart from thought or work; to provident
women this will seem no evil influence in married life.