With such contrariety
there can be no peace, with such similarity there can be no pleasure.
Our reasonings, though often formed upon different views, terminate
generally in the same conclusion. Our thoughts, like rivulets issuing
from distant springs, are each impregnated in its course with various
mixtures, and tinged by infusions unknown to the other, yet, at last,
easily unite into one stream, and purify themselves by the gentle
effervescence of contrary qualities.
These benefits we receive in a greater degree as we converse without
reserve, because we have nothing to conceal. We have no debts to be paid
by imperceptible deductions from avowed expenses, no habits to be
indulged by the private subserviency of a favoured servant, no private
interviews with needy relations, no intelligence with spies placed upon
each other. We considered marriage as the most solemn league of
perpetual friendship, a state from which artifice and concealment are to
be banished for ever, and in which every act of dissimulation is a
breach of faith.
The impetuous vivacity of youth, and that ardour of desire, which the
first sight of pleasure naturally produces, have long ceased to hurry us
into irregularity and vehemence; and experience has shewn us that few
gratifications are too valuable to be sacrificed to complaisance.
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