indwelling of any two souls united by marriage, it is essential, first, that they understand, and then that they appreciate and esteem one another; that they cherish mutual confidence, and a sympathy in each other's pursuits, tastes and aims. Coldness, distrust and want of sympathy, lead to dislike, misery, alienation, and is a moral death to their union, while, on the other hand, that union is obviously more living and more blessed, as their knowledge and esteem of each other are increased, and as their mutual confidence, sympathy and love are deepened. There can be no doubt, then, that matrimonial happiness depends upon a union of the above-mentioned qualities, and which cannot better be illustrated than by quoting Horace's animated description of perfect love :

Felices ter et ampliùs,

Quos irrupta tenet copula, nee malis,
Divulsus querimoniis,

Supremâ citius solvet amor die.

Thrice happy they in pure delights

Whom love with mutual bonds unites,
Unbroken by complaints or strife
E'en to the latest hour of life.

It has been truly said that when a man chooses a woman for his friend, that there always exists a mixture of love in this friendship between man and woman, and then it is no longer pure. Therefore, let not love intermingle with this friendship, for it is the only occasion in which it ought to be dreaded and banished. Once let love of a married man or woman take the place of friendship, and the most fatal consequences will ensuemore fatal when a woman feels a passion for a man to whom she cannot be united. M. de. Rivasol tells us that, wishing to disengage himself from one who had loved, not wisely but too well, he wrote a letter full of fine phrases, offering her a sentiment more pleasing, more solid than love; he spoke to her of erecting a temple to friendship. The woman, who was passionately attached to him, answered him in the following brief words

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Buildings are not erected with ashes."

Whether Joanna Melvill felt the passion of love equally strong, we are not prepared to say;

ambition, anxiety to redeem the past, probably formed some of the ingredients. Still, at any risk, she determined to hold sovereign sway over her cousin. She now became a

constant visitor at Riversdale, and day after day did Lord Hovingham drink the intoxicating poison of flattery, submitting to the machinations of a coquette, until his principles became so warped and contaminated that he not only viewed his wife with indifference, but allowed himself to seek and find happiness in the society of a strong-minded, self-willed woman, who soon became the companion of his hours of delight, and the confidante of his domestic sorrows. With the inconsistency common to those principles which do not spring from the thought-restraining injunctions of religion, Hovingham laid the flattering unction to his soul, that there was no crime in transferring his affections to Joanna. He depended on a certain sense of honour and the calm temperament of his passions, to preserve him from any act of gross immorality, and Miss Melvill had so firmly persuaded him of her purity, that he never for a

moment doubted it. He firmly believed that himself and the object of his admiration would be quoted as examples of pure Platonic friendship, and his delirium, acting upon a weak brain, sometimes rose so high as to make him attach a merit to a preference, which, though it violated his marriage vows of devotion to one alone, he no longer attempted to disguise. Lady Hovingham felt the painful change in her situation, and her regrets were heightened by perceiving that Joanna Melvill assumed an avowed superiority, and gloried in paying and receiving those attentions which should have been the wife's exclusive privilege.

Hovingham never showed the slightest affection in his manner to his wife; he was civil in public, but in private cold and somewhat wayward. How different was his behaviour to Joanna! Truly might Margaret have exclaimed in the lines of the poet :

With her he spent those pleasing hours

Which did to me belong,

She in his eyes did all things right,

While I did all things wrong.

The affair soon became the talk of the town. The equivocal term "affair" is a most extraordinary expletive. An affair of honour implies intentional murder, and an affair of gallantry describes one of those sins which are expressly forbidden in Sacred Writ. Soft terms are gossamer veils thrown over any breach in the Commandments, and, in our days, when proceedings are about to take place in the Divorce Court, the persons implicated are said "to have got into a mess."

The world of fashion were divided into two parties; some took the part of Lord Hovingham, others inveighed against the baseness of a husband in neglecting an amiable and pretty wife, whose affections he entirely possessed. The Francis Hovinghamites consisted principally of fast ladies and roués, while Lady Hovingham's vindicators were chiefly composed of the right-minded portion. of the community.

Byron describes "ennui a growth of English root," and certainly there is no lack of