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 disagreeable men. I think I could like any good-humoured man with a comfortable income."

At times a delicacy of touch lends distinction to the frankest worldliness, as when Mary Crawford generously applauds her brother Henry's determination to marry Fanny Price:

"I know that a wife you loved would be the happiest of women; and that even when you ceased to love, she would yet find in you the liberality and good breeding of a gentleman."

There is a lamentable lack of sentiment in even this last and happiest exposition of married life; but it expresses the whole duty of husbands, and the whole welfare of wives, as understood in the year 1814.

If Jane Austen and Thackeray wrought their heroines with perfect and painstaking accuracy, Scott's attitude was for the most part one of reprehensible indifference. His world