I know not which is worse, to be wife to a man that is continually changing his loves, or to an husband that hath but one mistress whom he loves with a constant passion.  And if you keep some measure of civility to her, he will at least esteem you; but he of the roving humour plays an hundred frolics that divert the town and perplex his wife.  She often meets with her husband’s mistress, and is at a loss how to carry herself towards her.  ’Tis true the constant man is ready to sacrifice, every moment, his whole family to his love; he hates any place where she is not, is prodigal in what concerns his love, covetous in other respects; expects you should be blind to all he doth, and though you can’t but see, yet must not dare to complain.  And though both, he who lends his heart to whosoever pleases it, and he that gives it entirely to one, do both of them require the exactest devoir from their wives, yet I know not if it be not better to be wife to an inconstant husband (provided he be something discreet), than to a constant fellow who is always perplexing her with his inconstant humour.  For the unconstant lovers are commonly the best humoured; but let them be what they will, women ought not to be unfaithful for Virtue’s sake and their own, nor to offend by example.  It is one of the best bonds of charity and obedience in the wife if she think her husband wise, which she will never do if she find him jealous.

     “Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age,
     and old men’s nurses.”

The last degrading sentence is found alas! in the Moral Essays of Bacon.  Lady Gethin, with an intellect superior to that of the women of that day, had no conception of the dignity of the female character, the claims of virtue, and the duties of honour.  A wife was only to know obedience and silence:  however, she hints that such a husband should not be jealous!  There was a sweetness in revenge reserved for some of these married women.

ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Robinson Crusoe, the favourite of the learned and the unlearned, of the youth and the adult; the book that was to constitute the library of Rousseau’s Emilius, owes its secret charm to its being a new representation of human nature, yet drawn from an existing state; this picture of self-education, self-inquiry, self-happiness, is scarcely a fiction, although it includes all the magic of romance; and is not a mere narrative of truth, since it displays all the forcible genius of one of the most original minds our literature can boast.  The history of the work is therefore interesting.  It was treated in the author’s time as a mere idle romance, for the philosophy was not discovered in the story; after his death it was considered to have been pillaged from the papers of Alexander Selkirk, confided to the author, and the honour, as well as the genius, of De Foe were alike questioned.