There is another sort of homely happiness, aptly described in the plain words of Bishop NEWTON.  He found “the study of sacred and classic authors ill agreed with butchers’ and bakers’ bills;” and when the prospect of a bishopric opened on him, “more servants, more entertainments, a better table, &c.,” it became necessary to look out for “some clever, sensible woman to be his wife, who would lay out his money to the best advantage, and be careful and tender of his health; a friend and companion at all hours, and who would be happier in staying at home than be perpetually gadding abroad.”  Such are the wives not adapted to be the votaries, but who may be the faithful companions through life, even of a man of genius.

But in the character of the higher female we may discover a constitutional faculty of docility and enthusiasm which has varied with the genius of different ages.  It is the opinion of an elegant metaphysician, that the mind of the female adopts and familiarises itself with ideas more easily than that of man, and hence the facility with which the sex contract or lose habits, and accommodate their minds to new situations.  Politics, war, and learning, are equally objects of attainment to their delightful susceptibility.  Love has the fancied transparency of the cameleon.  When the art of government directed the feelings of a woman, we behold Aspasia, eloquent with the genius of Pericles, instructing the Archons; Portia, the wife of the republican Brutus, devouring burning coals; and the wife of Lucan, transcribing and correcting the Pharsalia, before the bust of the poet, which she had placed on her bed, that his very figure might never be absent.  When universities were opened to the sex, they acquired academic glory.  The wives of military men have shared in the perils of the field; or like Anna Comnena and our Mrs. Hutchinson, have become even their historians.  In the age of love and sympathy, the female often receives an indelible pliancy from her literary associate.  His pursuits become the objects of her thoughts, and he observes his own taste reflected in his family; much less through his own influence, for his solitary labours often preclude him from forming them, than by that image of his own genius—­the mother of his children!  The subjects, the very books which enter into his literary occupation, are cherished by her imagination; a feeling finely opened by the lady of the author of “Sandford and Merton:”  “My ideas of my husband,” she said, “are so much associated with his books, that to part with them would be as it were breaking some of the last ties which still connect me with so beloved an object.  The being in the midst of books he has been accustomed to read, and which contain his marks and notes, will still give him a sort of existence with me.  Unintelligible as such fond chimeras may appear to many people, I am persuaded they are not so to you.”