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New Zealand Herald, Volume III, Issue 643, 4 December 1865, Page 5

Unhappy Habeiaoes among Men of Genius.— The rare occu rence of geniuß with domestic comfort is perfectly awful. Tal'o Dante, the exile who left his wifo, never wishing to see hi-r more; take Tasso, wifeless ; Petrarch, wifeless ; Ariosto, wifeless; Milton, thrice married, but only cnco with much comfort ; Drydon, wedded, like Addison, to a title and discord; Young lives alone till past fifty; Swift'B marriage is no marriage; Sterne's, Churchill's, liyron's, Coleridge'ii marriages broken and unhappy. Then we have a sot of celibattB —Herrick, Cowley, Pope, Thomson, Prior, Guy, Shenstono, Gray, Akenside, Goldsmith, Collins, and I know not how niiiiiy more of our best poets. Johnson had a wifo, loved, and soon lost her. It is almost enough to make a woman tremble at the i joj of allying themselves with, genius, or giving birth to it. Take the philosophers —Bacon, like his famous legal adversary Coke, eeeius to have enjoyed little domestic comfort, and speals, for, as he says, " certain grave reasons," disapprovingly of his partner. Our metaphysicians— liobbes, Loctio, Bentham, Butler—are as solitary as Spinosa and Kant. The celibate philosopher Hums conducts us to the other great bachelor historianß, Gibbon and Mac.iulay; as Bishop Butler does to some of the princes of English divinity—Hooker cajoled into marrying a shrew. Cliillingworth unmarried. Hammond unmarried, Leigt'ton unmarried, Barrow also single. I only take foremost men; the list might be swelled with monarchs and generals in marriage. Why has this been ? The reasons srs many. Some of those enumerated above have owed their very greatness to that constitution of mind which allows little play to the affections or passions, finding all their happiness in one absorbing pursuit* and livingtheir only tiue life in speculation. Others, full of a supreme ideal, ure quick of disgust at thei actual, and so never make a settlement, or start from it as soon as made. Others have been in a hurry to decorate from the wardrobe of their own fancy partfr ners whom such robing would by no means fit, and who, so far from sympathising with them, have not proved capable of being, in the slightest degree, even recipients of their intelligence. Others still have formed early and passionate attachmpnts which have stood in the way of a final settlement, and so hare broken terms with society, raging and smarting under the lash wii'' which it tries to whip into some legitimate path the children of nonconformity.— Locon in Council. '

Hugging. —An editor in lowa bus been finod 200 dollars for hugging a girl in cburch (*' Early Arguß*") —Cheap enough ! Wo onco hugged a girl in church, some ten years ago, aud it has cost a thousand a year ever since.—Chichago Young American, A Yankee showman boa addressed a noto to Sec* rotary Stanton, offering 5,000,000 dollars for aJeasa. of JeE Davis's body, whom bo will exhibit abre.,He is willing to enter into bonds to :rGturn the captiVO ill p yoar.