Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volumes 33-38, 1876-1878 - Cornhill magazine > Volume 34

"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE." 171
of the true motherly touch. And this woukl seem to show, even for
women, some narrowing influence in comfortable married life. But the
rule is none the less cei-tain : if you wish the i^ick of men and women,
take a good bachelor and a good wife.
I am often filled with wonder that so many marriages are passably
successful, and so few come to open failure, the more so as I fail to
understand the principle on which people regulate their choice. I see
women marrying indisci-iminately with staring burgesses and ferret-
faced, white-eyed boys, and men dwell in contentment with noisy scul-
lions, or taking into their lives acidulous vestals. It is a common answer
to say the good people marry because they fall in love ; and of covirse
you may use and misuse a word as much as you please, if you have the
world along with you. But love is at least a somewhat hyj^erbolical
expression for such lukewarm preference. It Ls not here, anyway, that
Love employs his golden shafts ; he cannot be said, with any fitness of
language, to reign here and revel. Indeed, if this be love at all, it is
plain the poets have been fooling with mankind since the foundation of
the world. And you have only to look these happy couples in the face,
to see they have never been in love, or in hate, or in any other high
passion, all their days. When you see a dish of fruit at dessert, you
sometimes set your affections upon one particular peach or nectarine,
watch it with some anxiety as it comes round the table, and feel quite a
sensible disappointment when it is taken by some one else. I have used
the phrase " high passion." "Well, I should say this was about as high a
passion as generally leads to mariiage. One husband hears after mar-
riage that some poor fellow is dying of his wife's love. " What a'pity ! "
he exclaims ; " you know I could so easily have got another ! " And
yet that is a very happy union. Or again : A young man was telling
me the sweet story of his loves. " I like it well enough as long as her
sisters are there," said this amorous swain ; " but I don't know what to
do when we're alone." Once more : A manied lady was debating the
subject with another lady. " You know, dear," said the first, "after ten
years of marriage, if he is nothing else, your husband is always an old
friend." "I have many old friends," returned the other, "but I prefer
them to be nothing more." "Oh, perhaps I might f refer that also!"
There is a common note in these three illustrations of the modei'n idyll ;
and it must be owned the god goes among us with a limping gait and
blear eyes. You wonder whether it was so always ; whether desii'e was
always equally dull and spiritless, and possession equally cold. I cannot
help fancying most people make, ere they marry, some such table of
recommendations as Hannah Godwin wrote to her brother William
anent her friend. Miss Gay. It is so charmingly comical, and so pat to
the occasion, that I miist quote a few ^^hrases. " The young lady is in
every sense formed to make one of yoiu* disposition really happy. She
has a pleasing voice, with which she accompanies her musical instru-
ment with judgment. She has an easy politeness in hei- manners,