I spent a month with Dr and Mrs Ormiston at their vicarage in the country, before the former entered upon his official residence as Principal; and can assure the reader that, in spite of ten--it may be more--years of difference in age, they are the happiest couple I ever saw. I may almost say, the only happy couple I ever saw, most of my married acquaintance appearing at the best only _contented_ couples, not drawing their happiness so exclusively from each other as suits my notion of what such a tie ought to be. Of course, I do not take my own matrimonial experience into account; the same principle of justice which forbids a man to give evidence in his own favour, humanely excusing him from making any admission which may criminate himself. Mrs Ormiston is as beautiful, as amiable, as ever, and has lost all the reserve and sadness which, in her maiden days, over-shadowed her charms; and so sincere was and is my admiration of her person and character, and so warmly was I in the habit of expressing it, that I really believe my dilating upon her attractions used to make Mrs Francis Hawthorne somewhat jealous, until she had the happiness to make her acquaintance, and settled the point by falling in love with the lady herself.
DEAR MR EDITOR--I should like to offer you some more of my criticisms on the hexameters which have been written in English, and, by your good leave, will try to do so at some future time. But there are probably some of your readers who entertain the prejudices against English hexameters which we often hear from English critics of the last generation. I cannot come to any understanding with these readers about special hexameters, till I have said something of these objections to hexameters in general. One of these objections I tried to dispose of in a former missive; namely, that “we cannot have good hexameters in English, because we have so few spondees.” There are still other erroneous doctrines commonly entertained relative to this matter, which may be thus briefly expressed;--that in hexameters we adopt a difference of long and short syllables, such as does not regulate other forms of English versification; and that the versification itself--the movement of the hexameter--is borrowed from Greek and Latin poetry. Now, in opposition to these opinions, I am prepared to show that our English hexameters suppose no other relations of strong and weak syllables than those which govern our other kinds of verse;--and that the hexameter movement is quite familiar to the native English ear.
