Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 1.djvu/293

 years, under the guidance of a weak mother, were employed in polishing, not strengthening, the edifice of her understanding, and the external ornaments only served to accelerate the fall of the fabric, and to increase the calamity.

Bred up in France, and almost in the fervour of the Revolution, she had imbibed some of its libertine opinions; among others, that marriage was a civil contract, and if entered into at all, might be broken at the pleasure of either party. This idea was strengthened and confirmed in her by the instances she had seen of matrimonial discord, particularly in her own family. When two people, who fancied they loved, had bound themselves by an indissoluble knot, they felt from that time the irksomeness of restraint, which they would never have felt if they had possessed the power of separation; and would have lived happily together, if they had not been compelled to do it. "How long you, my dear Frank," said Eugenia to me one day, "may continue to love me, I know not; but