"
(15) 'Biographia Literaria,' chap. i.
(16) Sir John Bowring's 'Memoirs of Bentham,' p. 10.
(17) Notwithstanding recent censures of classical studies as a useless
waste of time, there can be no doubt that they give the highest
finish to intellectual culture. The ancient classics contain the
most consummate models of literary art; and the greatest writers
have been their most diligent students. Classical culture was the
instrument with which Erasmus and the Reformers purified Europe.
It distinguished the great patriots of the seventeenth century;
and it has ever since characterised our greatest statesmen. "I
know not how it is," says an English writer, "but their commerce
with the ancients appears to me to produce, in those who
constantly practise it, a steadying and composing effect upon
their judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and events
in general. They are like persons who have had a weighty and
impressive experience; they are more truly than others under the
empire of facts, and more independent of the language current
among those with whom they live."
(18) Hazlitt's TABLE TALK: 'On Thought and Action.'
CHAPTER XI.--COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE.
"Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,
Shall win my love."--SHAKSPEARE.
"In the husband Wisdom, In the wife Gentleness."--GEORGE HERBERT.
"If God had designed woman as man's master, He would have taken
her from his head; If as his slave, He would have taken her from
his feet; but as He designed her for his companion and equal, He
took her from his side.
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