to mature and ripened life; and all this, before they are capable of expressing rationally, any marks of compliant gratitude, or good disposition, to compensate for her constant attendance and wakeful solicitude. And therefore, for the husband to deny her the comfort of a most cordial love, and benevolent endearing sympathy, under these peculiar cares, must be to the last degree unnatural.

Add to this, that her situation and character oblige her to a state of closer confinement: and stronger marks of affection are necessary, to sweeten this comparative solitude, to encourage her to give a cheerful and constant attendance to all family concerns; and prevent, for want of her finding a suitable relief at home, her seeking abroad after amusements of pleasure and vanity; which are of a contagious nature, and will soon grow into settled habits of luxury and extravagance.

In the last place, the matrimonial relation having been proved to be inviolable-where no extraordinary offence or just cause of its dissolution is given-but by the death of one of the contracting parties; the necessity of a mutual sincere affection, and especially on the side of the husband, the chief person engaged, must from hence undeniably appear: because nothing

else can render such a strict and indissoluble union in any degree tolerable. The company of persons, indifferent to each other, soon becomes distasteful; if they are tied down to it without redress, they consider it as a chain or clog upon their liberty. This, reciprocal love would not only sweeten, but convert into the most desirable privilege and blessing of social life. But a dull, formal, affected civility can never remove the disgusts, the grievous anxieties and aversions, that will attend it. Nor can even the bare dry decorum of outward civility be long maintained, where there is no mutual esteem and affection. So that reason, prudence, interest, all conspire in recommending that part of the husband's duty which I am now considering; since neither order, nor family discipline, nor even his own satisfaction and peace of mind, can long subsist without it.

But here it may be proper for me to observe, that the love of husbands to their wives cannot imply in it the indulging them in any singular humours, and odd starts of fancy, which have no foundation in reason, but spring from mere capriciousness of temper; because such singularities as these, are not only a disparagement to their understandings, but render them really unamiable. As there are very few men in the

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world, of any reflection or solid thought, that would be induced to love a woman at first if she appeared to be of so fantastic a temper, liable to unaccountable, and, of consequence endless varieties: so if it has been artfully concealed before marriage, the discovery of it afterwards can never be a natural means either to preserve or increase love; but has a direct tendency to lessen it, if not to extinguish it altogether. And if husbands voluntarily allow their wives any extravagances beyond their fortunes, which luxury or vanity may demand, this also is rather a mark of hatred, than of a true and genuine affection; because it must involve their children, for whom they have a common concern, and, in the end, the wife herself, in distress and ruin.

There is no wife, however infected with views and schemes of this kind, but what would be apt to reproach her husband, in the miserable event of things, with his too tame condescension and compliance. She would exclaim, with most bitter invectives, against any indifferent man who should thus contribute to the distress of her family. And can she herself consent to act the very same part? Can she attempt to draw in her husband to be an accessory to the utter extirpation of honour and natural affection in each

other? This is quite unaccountable. And the refusing to gratify such unreasonable demands is, so far from being repugnant to the most cordial and tender affection, rather the clearest demonstration of it.

But the real contrarieties to love are-ill language, a churlish, morose behaviour, public insult, opposing reasonable desires, keeping an unnatural distance, and not endeavouring to the utmost of our ability to mitigate the wife's griefs and promote her happiness. And if, by her inexcusable and dishonest conduct, she render herself utterly unamiable; even in this case, where there neither is, nor can be, a mutual complacency, there should still remain strong, in the husband's heart, a love of benevolence; inclining him most ardently to wish for, and use the kindest, gentlest, and most effectual methods to procure her amendment, and re-establishment in the paths of virtue and honour.

Thus have I largely considered the first general branch of the duty of husbands towards their wives, and have shewn that Christianity strongly recommends and enforces it, as a tie indispensable; and that it has a plain foundation in nature; that reason, humanity, prudence, interest, all concur in pleading for it, as one of the first and most important of all human social obligations;

and that neither order, nor family discipline, nor peace and harmony between the parties contracted for life, nor any of the duties of the married state, can possibly subsist without it. I have likewise particularly explained what is not implied in it; wherein it really consists; its proper effects, its excesses, its contrarieties.

And the general reflection, that naturally occurs to the mind upon the whole, is thisThat if sincere love be an essential part of the husband's duty, it must also be absolutely necessary, and a duty equally incumbent on him, to take care on what principles, and with what views, he enters into that strict relation; from the just idea of which, an union of hearts, a mutual communication of joys and sorrows, and the most refined and constant friendship, are, in reason, for ever inseparable. If the considerations on which marriage is contracted are such as, in the nature of things, can neither beget, nor preserve, nor improve love, they must be repugnant to the very design of the institution itself, and inconsistent with its fundamental duties. If not to be an affectionate husband be-unless in some extraordinary and excepted cases already mentioned, where the thing is in itself next to impossibleboth unchristian and unnatural, and an infringement of the most sacred laws both of religion and