The major part of the misery in marriage arises from the false estimate which we make of married happiness.  A young man, who is a pure and good one, when he starts in life is very apt to fancy all women angels.  He loves and venerates his mother; he believes her better, purer far, than his father, because his school-days have taught him practically what men are; but he does not yet know what women are.  His sisters are angels too, and the wife he is about to marry, the best, the purest woman in the world, also an angel, of course.  Marriage soon opens his eyes.  It would be out of the course of nature for every body to secure an angel; and the young husband finds that he has married a woman of the ordinary pattern—­not a whit better on the whole than man; perhaps worse, because weaker.  The high-flown sentiment is all gone, the romantic ideas fade down to the light of common day.  “The bloom of young desire, the purple light of love,” as Milton writes in one of the most beautiful lines ever penned, too often pass away as well, and a future of misery is opened up on the basis of disappointment.  After all, the difficulty to be got over is this—­how is mankind to be taught to take a just estimate of things?  Is it possible to put old heads upon young shoulders?  Is not youth a perpetual state of intoxication?  Is not every thing better and brighter far then than in middle life?  These are the questions to be solved, and once solved we shall be happy; we shall have learnt the great lesson, that whatever is, is ordained by a great and wise power, and that we are therewith to be content.

A kindly consideration for others is the best method in the world to adopt, to ease off our own troubles; and this consideration is to be cultivated very easily.  There is not one of those who will take up this book who is perfectly happy, and not one who does not fancy that he or she might be very much better off.  Perhaps ten out of every dozen have been disappointed in life.  They are not precisely what they should be.  The wise poor man, in spite of his wisdom, envies the rich fool; and the fool—­if he has any appreciation—­envies the wisdom of the other.  One is too tall, the other is too short; ill-health plagues a third, and a bad wife a fourth; and so on.  Yet there is not one of the sorrows or troubles that we have but might be reasoned away.  The short man can not add a cubit to his stature; but he may think, after all, that many great heroes have been short, and that it is the mind, not the form, that makes the man.  Napoleon the Great, who had high-heeled boots, and was, to be sure, hardly a giant in stature, once looked at a picture of Alexander, by David.  “Ah!” said he, taking snuff, with a pleased air, “Alexander was shorter than I.”  The hero last mentioned is he who cried because he had no more worlds to conquer, and who never thought of conquering himself.  But if Alexander were disappointed about another world, his courtiers were much more so because they were not Alexanders.  But the world would not have cared for a surplus of them; one was enough.  Conquerers are very pleasant fellows, no doubt, and are disappointed and sulky because they can not gain more battles; but we poor frogs in the world are quite satisfied with one King Stork.