Virginibus Puerisque | Page 4

and complete on your part, it is more so on the
other; and you have not to fear so many contingencies; it is not every
wind that can blow you from your anchorage; and so long as Death
withholds his sickle, you will always have a friend at home. People
who share a cell in the Bastile, or are thrown together on an
uninhabited isle, if they do not immediately fall to fisticuffs, will find
some possible ground of compromise. They will learn each other's
ways and humours, so as to know where they must go warily, and
where they may lean their whole weight. The discretion of the first
years becomes the settled habit of the last; and so, with wisdom and
patience, two lives may grow indissolubly into one.
But marriage, if comfortable, is not at all heroic. It certainly narrows
and damps the spirits of generous men. In marriage, a man becomes
slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.
It is not only when Lydgate misallies himself with Rosamond Vincy,
but when Ladislaw marries above him with Dorothea, that this may be
exemplified. The air of the fireside withers out all the fine wildings of
the husband's heart. He is so comfortable and happy that he begins to
prefer comfort and happiness to everything else on earth, his wife
included. Yesterday he would have shared his last shilling; to-day "his
first duty is to his family," and is fulfilled in large measure by laying
down vintages and husbanding the health of an invaluable parent.
Twenty years ago this man was equally capable of crime or heroism;
now he is fit for neither. His soul is asleep, and you may speak without
constraint; you will not wake him. It is not for nothing that Don
Quixote was a bachelor and Marcus Aurelius married ill. For women,

there is less of this danger. Marriage is of so much use to a woman,
opens out to her so much more of life, and puts her in the way of so
much more freedom and usefulness, that, whether she marry ill or well,
she can hardly miss some benefit. It is true, however, that some of the
merriest and most genuine of women are old maids; and that those old
maids, and wives who are unhappily married, have often most of the
true motherly touch. And this would seem to show, even for women,
some narrowing influence in comfortable married life. But the rule is
none the less certain: if you wish the pick 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 indiscriminately with staring burgesses and
ferret-faced, white-eyed boys, and men dwell in contentment with noisy
scullions, 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
course 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
hyperbolical expression for such luke-warm preference. It is 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 marriage. One husband hears
after marriage 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 married lady was debating the
subject with another lady. "You know, dear," said the first, "after ten
years of