"You women," he said to his wife, when she tried to induce him to seek favors at court by some concession of principle,--"you women never care for any thing but to be fine, and to ride in your coaches." In Father Adam's description of the original Eve, he says,-- "All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her, Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows." Something like this effect was always produced on John's mind when he tried to settle questions relating to his higher nature with Lillie.
He seemed, somehow, always to get the worst of it.

All her womanly graces and fascinations, so powerful over his senses and imagination, arrayed themselves formidably against him, and for the time seemed to strike him dumb.

What he believed, and believed with enthusiasm, when he was alone, or with Grace, seemed to drizzle away, and be belittled, when he undertook to convince her of it.

Lest John should be called a muff and a spoon for this peculiarity, we cite once more the high authority aforesaid, where Milton makes poor Adam tell the angel,-- "Yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." John went out from Lillie's presence rather humbled and over-crowed.
When the woman that a man loves laughs at his moral enthusiasms, it is like a black frost on the delicate tips of budding trees.

It is up-hill work, as we all know, to battle with indolence and selfishness, and self-seeking and hard-hearted worldliness.