WE have taken for the subjects of the foregoing moral essays, twelve
samples of married couples, carefully selected from a large stock on
hand, open to the inspection of all comers. These samples are intended
for the benefit of the rising generation of both sexes, and, for their
more easy and pleasant information, have been separately ticketed and
labelled in the manner they have seen.
We have purposely excluded from consideration the couple in which the
lady reigns paramount and supreme, holding such cases to be of a very
unnatural kind, and like hideous births and other monstrous deformities,
only to be discreetly and sparingly exhibited.
And here our self-imposed task would have ended, but that to those young
ladies and gentlemen who are yet revolving singly round the church,
awaiting the advent of that time when the mysterious laws of attraction
shall draw them towards it in couples, we are desirous of addressing a
few last words.
Before marriage and afterwards, let them learn to centre all their hopes
of real and lasting happiness in their own fireside; let them cherish the
faith that in home, and all the English virtues which the love of home
engenders, lies the only true source of domestic felicity; let them
believe that round the household gods, contentment and tranquillity
cluster in their gentlest and most graceful forms; and that many weary
hunters of happiness through the noisy world, have learnt this truth too
late, and found a cheerful spirit and a quiet mind only at home at last.
How much may depend on the education of daughters and the conduct of
mothers; how much of the brightest part of our old national character may
be perpetuated by their wisdom or frittered away by their folly—how much
of it may have been lost already, and how much more in danger of
vanishing every day—are questions too weighty for discussion here, but
well deserving a little serious consideration from all young couples
nevertheless.
To that one young couple on whose bright destiny the thoughts of nations
are fixed, may the youth of England look, and not in vain, for an
example. From that one young couple, blessed and favoured as they are,
may they learn that even the glare and glitter of a court, the splendour
of a palace, and the pomp and glory of a throne, yield in their power of
conferring happiness, to domestic worth and virtue. From that one young
couple may they learn that the crown of a great empire, costly and
jewelled though it be, gives place in the estimation of a Queen to the
plain gold ring that links her woman’s nature to that of tens of
thousands of her humble subjects, and guards in her woman’s heart one
secret store of tenderness, whose proudest boast shall be that it knows
no Royalty save Nature’s own, and no pride of birth but being the child
of heaven!
So shall the highest young couple in the land for once hear the truth,
when men throw up their caps, and cry with loving shouts—