Marriage is certainly a perilous remedy. Instead of on two or
three, you stake your happiness on one life only. But still,
as the bargain is more explicit and complete on your part, it
is more so on the other; and you have not to fear so many
contingencies; it is not every wind that can blow you from
your anchorage; and so long as Death withholds his sickle, you
will always have a friend at home. People who share a cell in
the Bastile, or are thrown together on an uninhabited isle, if
they do not immediately fall to fisticuffs, will find some
possible ground of compromise. They will learn each other's
ways and humours, so as to know where they must go warily, and
where they may lean their whole weight. The discretion of the
first years becomes the settled habit of the last; and so,
with wisdom and patience, two lives may grow indissolubly into
one.

But marriage, if comfortable, is not at all heroic. It
certainly narrows and damps the spirits of generous men. In
marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a
fatty degeneration of his moral being. It is not only when
Lydgate misallies himself with Rosamond Vincy, but when
Ladislaw marries above him with Dorothea, that this may be
exemplified. The air of the fireside withers out all the fine
wildings of the husband's heart. He is so comfortable and
happy that he begins to prefer comfort and happiness to
everything else on earth, his wife included. Yesterday he
would have shared his last shilling; to-day "his first duty is
to his family," and is fulfilled in large measure by laying
down vintages and husbanding the health of an invaluable
parent. Twenty years ago this man was equally capable of