English notions, however, are not to be accepted in all matters, any more than the flat declaration of a fact will develop it in alt its bearings.  When our English society shall have advanced to a high civilization, it will be less expansive in denouncing the higher stupidities.  Among us, much of the social judgement of Bodge upon the relations of men to women is the stereotyped opinion of the land.  There is the dictum here for a man who adores a woman who is possessed by a husband.  If he has long adored her, and known himself to be preferred by her in innocency of heart; if he has solved the problem of being her bosom’s lord, without basely seeking to degrade her to being his mistress; the epithets to characterise him in our vernacular will probably be all the less flattering.  Politically we are the most self-conscious people upon earth, and socially the frankest animals.  The terrorism of our social laws is eminently serviceable, for without it such frank animals as we are might run into bad excesses.  I judge rather by the abstract evidence than by the examples our fair matrons give to astounded foreigners when abroad.

Louise writes that her husband is paralysed.  The Marquis de Mazardouin is at last tasting of his mortality.  I bear in mind the day when he married her.  She says that he has taken to priestly counsel, and, like a woman, she praises him for that.  It is the one thing which I have not done to please her.  She anticipates his decease.  Should she be free—­ what then?  My heart does not beat the faster for the thought.  There are twenty years upon it, and they make a great load.  But I have a desire that she should come over to us.  The old folly might rescue me from the new one.  Not that I am any further persecuted by the dread that I am in imminent danger here.  I have established a proper mastery over my young lady.  ‘Nous avons change de role’.  Alice is subdued; she laughs feebly, is becoming conscious—­a fact to be regretted, if I desired to check the creature’s growth.  There is vast capacity in the girl.  She has plainly not centred her affections upon Charles, so that a man’s conscience might be at ease if—­if he chose to disregard what is due to decency.  But, why, when I contest it, do I bow to the world’s opinion concerning disparity of years between husband and wife?  I know innumerable cases of an old husband making a young wife happy.  My friend, Dr. Galliot, married his ward, and he had the best wife of any man of my acquaintance.  She has been publishing his learned manuscripts ever since his death.  That is an extreme case, for he was forty-five years her senior, and stood bald at the altar.  Old General Althorpe married Julia Dahoop, and, but for his preposterous jealousy of her, might be cited in proof that the ordinary reckonings are not to be a yoke on the neck of one who earnestly seeks to spouse a fitting mate, though late in life.  But, what are fifty years?  They mark the prime of a healthy man’s existence.  He has by that time seen the world, can decide, and settle, and is virtually more eligible—­to use the cant phrase of gossips—­than a young man, even for a young girl.  And may not some fair and fresh reward be justly claimed as the crown of a virtuous career?