Emily is to superintend the dairy and garden; she has a passion for flowers, with which I am extremely pleased, as it will be to her a continual source of pleasure.
I feel such delight in the idea of making her happy, that I think nothing a trifle which can be in the least degree pleasing to her.
I could even wish to invent new pleasures for her gratification.
I hope to be happy; and to make the loveliest of womankind so, because my notions of the state, into which I am entering, are I hope just, and free from that romantic turn so destructive to happiness.
I have, once in my life, had an attachment nearly resembling marriage, to a widow of rank, with whom I was acquainted abroad; and with whom I almost secluded myself from the world near a twelvemonth, when she died of a fever, a stroke I was long before I recovered.
I loved her with tenderness; but that love, compared to what I feel for Emily, was as a grain of sand to the globe of earth, or the weight of a feather to the universe.
A marriage where not only esteem, but passion is kept awake, is, I am convinced, the most perfect state of sublunary happiness: but it requires great care to keep this tender plant alive; especially, I blush to say it, on our side.
Women are naturally more constant, education improves this happy disposition: the husband who has the politeness, the attention, and delicacy of a lover, will always be beloved.
The same is generally, but not always, true on the other side: I have sometimes seen the most amiable, the most delicate of the sex, fail in keeping the affection of their husbands.
I am well aware, my friend, that we are not to expect here a life of continual rapture; in the happiest marriage there is danger of some languid moments: to avoid these, shall be my study; and I am certain they are to be avoided.
The inebriation, the tumult of passion, will undoubtedly grow less after marriage, that is, after peaceable possession; hopes and fears alone keep it in its first violent state: but, though it subsides, it gives place to a tenderness still more pleasing, to a soft, and, if you will allow the expression, a voluptuous tranquillity: the pleasure does not cease, does not even lessen; it only changes its nature.