While free and fiue the bride's appear below, As light and slender as her jessamines grow. Crabbe. MARRIAGE-Choice in. Take the 'daughter of a good mother. Fuller. MARRIAGE-Different Conditions of. The marriage-life is always an insipid, a vexations, or a happy condition. The first is, when two people of no genius or taste for themselves meet together, upon such a settlement as has been thought reasonable by parents and conveyancers, from an exact valuation of the land and cash of both parties. In this case the young lady's person is no more regarded than the house and improvements in purchase of an estate; but she goes with her fortune, rather than her fortune with her. These make up the crowd or vulgar of the rich, and fill up the lumber of the human race, without beneficence towards those below them, or respect towards those above them. The veratious life arises from a conjunction of two people of quick taste and resentment, put together for reasons well known to their friends, in which especial care is taken to avoid (what they think the chief of evils) poverty, and insure to them riches, with every evil besides. These good people live in a constant constraint before company, and too great familiarity alone. When they are within observation, they fret at each other's carriage and behaviour; when alone, they revile each other's person and conduct. In company, they are in purgatory; when only together, in a hell. The happy marriage is, where two persons meet and voluntarily make choice of each other, without principally regarding or neglecting the circumstances of fortune or beauty. These may still love in spite of adversity or sickness: the former we may, in some measure, defend ourselves from; the other is the portion of our very make. Steele. MARRIAGE-Counsels for. Many a marriage has commenced, like the morning, red, and perished like a mushroom. Wherefore? Because the married pair neglected to be as agreeable to each other after their union as they were before it. Seek always to please each other, my children, but in doing so keep heaven in mind. Lavish not your love to-day, remembering that marriage has a morrow and again a morrow. Bethink ye, my daughters, what the word house-wife expresses. The married woman is her husband's domestic trust. On her he ought to be able to place his reliance in house and family; to her he should confide the key of his heart and the lock of his store-room. His honour and his home are under her protection, his welfare in her hands. Ponder this! And you, my sons, be true men of honour, and good fathers of your families. Act in such wise that your wives respect and love you. And what more shall I say to you, my children? Peruse diligently the word of God; that will guide you out of storm and dead calm, and bring you safe into port. And as for the rest-do your best! Frederika Bremer. MARRIAGE-Delights of. What a delicious breath marriage sends forth- MARRIAGE. MARRIAGE—in the Time of Homer. We find throughout the poems those signs of the overpowering force of conjugal attachments which, from all that has preceded, we might expect. While admitting the superior beauty of Calypso as an Immortal, Ulysses frankly owns to her that his heart is pining every day for Penelope. It is the highest honour of a hero to die fighting on behalf of his wife and children. The continuance of domestic happiness, and the concord of man and wife, is a blessing so great that it excites the envy of the gods, and they interrupt it by some adverse dispensation. And no wonder; for nothing has earth to offer better than when man and wife dwell together in unity of spirit; their friends rejoice, their foes repine; the human heart has nothing more to desire. There is here apparently involved that great and characteristic idea of the conjugal relation, that it includes and concentrates in itself all other loves. And this very idea is expressed by Andromache, where, after relating the slaughter of her family by Achilles, she tells Hector, Hector, nay, but thou art for me a father, and a mother, and a brother, as well as the husband of my youth." To which he in the same spirit of enlarged attachment replies, by saying that neither the fate of Troy, which he sees approaching, nor of Hecuba, nor of Priam, nor of his brothers, can move his soul like the thought that Andromache will as a captive weave the web and bear the pitcher for some dame of Messe or of Hypereia. With the pictures which we thus find largely scattered over the poems, of the relations of woman to others, the characters which Homer has given us of woman herself are in thorough harmony. Among his living characters we do not find the viragos, the termaganta, the incarnate fiends of the later legends. Nay, the woman of Homer never dreams of using violence, even as a protection against wrong. It must be admitted, that he does not even present to us the heroine in any more pronounced form than that of the moral endurance of Penelope. The heroine proper, the Joan of Arc, is certainly a noble creation; but yet one, perhaps, implying a state of things more abnormal than that which had been reached by the Greeks of the Homeric age. The pictures of women, which Homer presents to us, are perfect pictures; but they are pictures simply of mothers, matrons, sisters, daughters, maidens, wives. scription which the Poet has given us of the violence and depravity of Clytemnestra, is the genuine counterpart of his high conception of the nature of woman. For, in proportion as that nature is elevated and pure, does it The de I know the sum of all that makes a man-a just man-happy, Consists in the well choosing of his wife; Oh! surely marriage is a great and sacred responsibility. It is a bark in which two souls venture out on life's stormy sea, with no aid but their own to help them; the well-doing of their frail vessel must in future solely rest upon themselves; no one can take part either to mar or make their bliss or misery. From her husband alone must henceforth flow all the happiness that the wife is destined to know: he is the only being she must care to please; all other men are now to be to her but shadows And he-what is his glancing on the wall. share in the compact? how does he fulfil his promise-redeem his pledge? For does he not swear to guard and cherish, and look leniently on the faults of the gentle girl he takes to his heart; and in return for all her duty and sweet obedience, be true to her in sickness and health, in wealth and in poverty, for ever and for ever? And blessed are the unions in which those feelings are fostered and preserved. Hamilton. MARRIAGE-Risks of. For marriage is a matter of more worth Whereas the contrary bringeth forth happiness, And is a pattern of celestial bliss. Shakspeare. MARRIAGE-Romance of. The romance of life gone! when with the humblest and most sordid cares of life are intimately associated the calm delights, the settled bliss of home; when upon duties, in themselves perhaps often wearisome and uninteresting, hang the prosperity and the happiness of wife and children; when there is no mean hope, because there is no hope in which regard for others does not largely mingle-no base fear, because suffering and distress cannot affect self alone; when the selfishness which turns honest industry to greed, and noble ambition to egotistical lust of power, is exercised; when life becomes a perpetual exercise of duties which are delights, and delights which are duties. Once romance meant chivalry; and the hero of romance was one who did his knightly devoirs, and was true and loyal to God and his lady love. If with us it has come to mean the sensual fancies of nerveless boys, and the sickly reveries of girls for whose higher faculties society can find no employment, it is only another instance in which the present is not so much wiser and grander than the past, as its flatterers are fond of imagining. To us it appears that where the capacity for generous devotion, for manly courage, for steadfast faith and love, exists, there exists the main element of romance, and that where the circumstances of life are most favourable for the development of the qualities in action, they are romantic circumstances whether the person displaying them be, like Alton Locke, a tailor, or like King Arthur, a man of stalwart arm and lordly presence. Nor do we see that the giants, dragons, and other monsters of the old romance, are in themselves one whit more interesting than the obstacles that beset the modern true knight in his struggles to perform manfully the duties of his life, and to carry out the noble spirit of that vow which he has solemnly taken at the altar to love, comfort, honour, and keep in sickness and in health, the woman who has put her youth, her beauty, her life, and happiGeorge Brinsley. ness into his hands. MARRIAGE-Rule of. First get an absolute conquest over thyself, and then thou wilt easily govern thy wife. Fuller. MARRIAGE-Sacredness of. The thoughtlessness of youth and headlong impetus of passion frequently throw people into rash engagements, and in these cases the formal morality of the world, more careful of externals than of truth, declares it to be nobler for such rash engagements to be kept, even when the rashness is felt by the engaged, than that a man's honour should be stained by a of the spirit. To satisfy this prejudice, a life withdrawal. The letter thus takes precedence is sacrificed. A miserable marriage rescues the honour; and no one throws the burden of that misery upon the prejudice. I am not forgetting the necessity of being stringent against the common thoughtlessness of youth in forming such relations; but I say that this thoughtlessness once having occurred, reprobate it as you will, the pain which a separation may bring had better be endured than evaded by an unholy marriage, which cannot come to good. Lewes. MARRIED. MASSACRE. MARRIED AND SINGLE- Relative MARTYRS-Religious Faith of. Value of the. Though bachelors be the strongest stakes, married men are the best binders, in the hedge of the commonwealth. It is the policy of the Londoners, when they send a ship into the Levant or Mediterranean Sea, to make every mariner therein a merchant, each seaman venturing somewhat of his own, which will make him more wary to avoid, and more valiant to undergo dangers. Thus married men, especially if having posterity, are the deeper sharers in that state wherein they live, which engageth their affections to the greater loyalty. Fuller. MARTYRDOM-Cause of. To die for truth is not to die for one's country, but to die for the world. Truth, like the Venus de Medici, will pass down in thirty fragments to posterity; but posterity will collect and recompose them into a goddess. Then also thy temple, O eternal Truth! that now stands half below the earth, made hollow by the sepulchres of its witnesses, will raise itself in the total majesty of its proportions, and will stand in monumental granite; and every pillar on which it rests will be fixed in the grave of a martyr. Richter. MARTYR-Love of a. Love constitutes my crime: How can I better grow? How from my own heart fly? Those who imprison'd me should know True love can never die? Yea, tread and crush it with disdain, And it will live and burn again. And am I then to blame? He's always in my sight: And, having once inspired the flame, He always keeps it bright. For this they smite me and reprove, Because I cannot cease to love. What power shall dim its ray, And when its source of life is o'er, And only then, 'twill shine no more. God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And they stoned Stephen, [he] calling upon And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. St. Luke, MARTYRS-Noble Objects of. Their blood is shed No marble tells us whither. With their names No age was spared, nor sex, nay, no degree; To strike but only those who could do hurt, Was dull and poor. Some fell to make the number, As some the prey. Johnson. Methinks I see The glutton death gorged with devouring lives; Madame Guyon. Nothing but images of horror round me: 398 Rome all in blood, the ravish'd vestals raving, The sacred fire put out; robb'd mothers shrieks Deafening the gods with clamours for their babes, That sprawled aloft upon the soldiers' spears; The beard of age pluck'd up by barb'rous hands, While from their piteous wounds and horrid gashes, The lab'ring life flow'd faster than the blood. MASTER-of a Family. Lee. Such it hath been-shall be-beneath the sun; It is not only paying wages, and giving The many still must labour for the one! commands, that constitutes a master of a family; but prudence, equal behaviour, with a readiness to protect and cherish them, is what entitles a man to that character in their very hearts and sentiments. MASTERS-Example of. Steele. One way in which the characters of servants in high life might be improved, would be by seeing their masters a little more scrupulous than some of the more fashionable amongst them are wont to be in matters of truth and honesty. The adherence to honesty on the part of the masters might be exemplary; whereas their actual measure of honesty would perhaps be indicated with sufficient indulgence if they were described (in the qualified lanrage which Hamlet applies to himself) to be "indifferent honest." And there is a currency of untruth in daily use amongst fashionable people for purposes of convenience, which proceeds to a much bolder extent than the form of well-understood falsehood by which the middle classes also, not perhaps without some occasional violation of their more tender consciences, excuse themselves from receiving a guest. Fashionable people, moreover, are the most unscrupulous smugglers and buyers of sanggled goods, and have less difficulty than, others and less shame in making various illicit inroads upon the public property and revenue. It is not to be denied that these practices are, in point of fact, a species of lying and cheating; and the latter of them bears a close analogy to the sort of depredation in which the dishonesty of a servant commonly commences. servant it must seem quite as venial an offence to trench upon the revenues of a duke as to the duke it may seem to defraud the revenues of a kingdom. Such proceedings, if not absolutely to be branded as dishonest, are not at least altogether honourable; they are such as may be more easily excused in a menial than in a gentleman. Nor can it ever be otherwise than of an evil example to make truth and honesty matters of degree. Taylor. To a 'Tis nature's doom. Byron. MATERIALISM — an Doctrine. Insupportable The doctrine of the materialists was always, even in my youth, a cold, heavy, dull, and insupportable doctrine to me, and necessarily tending to atheism. When I heard with disgust, in the dissecting rooms, the plan of the physiologist, of the gradual secretion of matter, and its becoming endued with irritability, ripening into sensibility, and acquiring such organs as were necessary, by its own inherent forces, and at last rising into intellectual existence, a walk into the green fields, or woods, by the banks of rivers, brought back my feelings from nature to God. I saw in all the powers of matter, the instruments of the Deity; the sunbeams, the breath of the zephyr, awakened animation in forms prepared by Divine Intelligence to receive it; the insensate seed, the slumbering egg, which were to be vivified, appeared like the newborn animal, works of a divine mind: I saw love as the creative principle in the material world, and this love only as a divine attribute. Then, in my own mind, I felt connected with new sensations and indefinite hopes, a thirst for immortality; the great names of other ages, and of distant nations, appeared to me to be still living around me; and even in the funeral monuments of the heroic and the great, I saw, as it were, the indestructibility of mind. These feelings, though generally considered as poetical, offer a sound philosophical argument in favour of the immortality of the soul. In all the habits and instincts of young animals, their feelings or movements may be traced in intimate relation to their improved perfect state; their sports have always affinities to their modes of hunting or catching their food, and young birds even in the nest show marks of fondness, which, when their frames are developed, become signs of actions |