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rative act. The greatest error one can commit is to suppose that love consists only of those fugitive moments which, according to the magnificent comparison of Bossuet, "resemble in one's life-time nails driven in the wall; they appear numerous to the eye, but when collected together they can be held in the hand." Even in the most intimate relations of marriage, love is expended chiefly in charming conversations, in acts and words which breathe only goodness, grace, and delicacy. Women demand not that the extravagances of early wooing should be continued in the husband, but they will readily exchange all the transports of passion for those caresses of the soul which they prize so dearly, and which cost men nothing save a little attention. The flattering words of the lover are acceptably supplanted by the flattering acts of the husband, and even reproaches can be administered without sacrifice of tenderness, denials without disappointments, decisions without disputes. In short, it is as easy to "manage" as it is difficult to "govern" them. We translate the following from M. de Balzac, in illustration:
"One fine morning in the month of January, 1822, I ascended the boulevards of Paris, from the peaceful spheres of the Marais, to the elegant regions of the Chaussée d'Antin, remarking for the first time, and not without a philosophic joy, those singular gradations of physiognomy, and those varieties of garb which make each portion of the boulevard, from the Rue Pas de la Mule to La Madeleine, an individual world, and this whole Parisian girdle one great sampler of manners. Having as yet no idea of the things of life, and little suspecting that I should one day have the hardihood to constitute myself a legislator of marriage, I was going to breakfast with one of my college friends who was, perhaps too early, afflicted with a wife and two children.
