Essays and Selections Author:Basil Montagu Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Perhaps no greater error exists than the supposition, that two human beings, because they resemble in some respects, resemble in all. There are no two animals th... more »at differ more from each other than man from man. How different was Howard from JefFeries,—Eve on the first day of her creation from Mil wood,—Caliban from Ariel. In a very-interesting novel entitled " Marriage," there is the following dialogue between the couple a few weeks after their marriage : " Henry Douglas saw the storm gathering on the brow of his capricious wife, and clasping her in his arms, 1 Are you indeed so changed, my Julia, that you have forgot the time when you used to declare you would prefer a desart with your Henry to a throne with another ?' ' No,certainly not changed; but I did not very well know then what a desart was, or, at least, I had formed rather a different idea of it.' ' What was your idea of a desart?'said her husband laughing, ' do tell me, love.' ' Oh I thought it was a beautiful place, full of roses and myrtles, and smooth green turf, and murmuring rivulets, and, though very retired, yet not absolutely out of the world, but where one would occasionally see one's friends, and give dejeunes and fetes champetres.'" Such is the nature of errors from misunderstanding the word marriage. It is written in the code of Hindoo laws, " That a woman who, on the death of her husband, ascends the same burning pile with him is exaltedto heaven, as equal in virtue to Arundhati." By such jargon is ignorance and innocence misled. Upon the death of her husband the deluded widow sacrifices herself; she places her dead husband's head on her lap, and, amidst the dancing of maidens and the blessings of priests, joyously lights her funeral pile. Many years have not passed away since, under erroneous noti...« less