"What reason cannot collect," and Nekayah, "and what experiment has
not yet taught, can be known only from the report of others. I
have been told that late marriages are not eminently happy. This
is a question too important to be neglected; and I have often
proposed it to those whose accuracy of remark and comprehensiveness
of knowledge made their suffrages worthy of regard. They have
generally determined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to
suspend their fate upon each other at a time when opinions are
fixed and habits are established, when friendships have been
contracted on both sides, when life has been planned into method,
and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its own
prospects.

"It is scarcely possible that two travelling through the world
under the conduct of chance should have been both directed to the
same path, and it will not often happen that either will quit the
track which custom has made pleasing. When the desultory levity of
youth has settled into regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride
ashamed to yield, or obstinacy delighting to contend. And even
though mutual esteem produces mutual desire to please, time itself,
as it modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines likewise
the direction of the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to
the manners. Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts
to change the course of his own life very often labours in vain,
and how shall we do that for others which we are seldom able to do
for ourselves?"

"But surely," interposed the Prince, "you suppose the chief motive
of choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I shall seek a wife, it