clung
to, when in the midst of disillusionment and shattered ideals the noble
resolution has been clung to never to base personal happiness on a
broken trust or another's pain, I have over and over again known the,
most imperfect marriage prove in the end to be happy and contented.
Here again I quote some words of Mrs. Humphry Ward, which she puts into
the mouth of her hero: "No," he said with deep emphasis--"No; I have
come to think the most disappointing and hopeless marriage, nobly
borne, to be better worth having than what people call an 'ideal
passion'--if the ideal passion must be enjoyed at the expense of one of
those fundamental rules which poor human nature has worked out, with
such infinite difficulty and pain, for the protection and help of its
own weakness,"[36] I am aware that neither Mr. Grant Allen with his
"hill-top" novels, nor Mrs. Mona Caird need be taken too seriously, but
when the latter says, "There is something pathetically absurd in this
sacrifice to their children of generation after generation of grown
people,"[37] I would suggest that it would be still more pathetically
absurd to see the whole upward-striving past, the whole noble future of
the human race, sacrificed to their unruly wills and affections, their
passions and desires. If as Goldwin Smith says in his rough, incisive
way, "There is not much union of heart in marriage, I do not see that
there would be any more union of heart in adultery."

I have dwelt thus earnestly upon this point because the sooner we
realize for ourselves and our girls that any relaxation of the marriage
bond will in its disastrous consequences fall upon us, and not upon men,
the better. It is the woman who first grows old and loses her personal
attractions, while a man often preserves his beauty into extreme old
age. It is the burdened mother of a family who cannot compete in
companionship with the highly cultured young unmarried lady, with the
leisure to post herself up in the last interesting book or the newest
political movement. It is the man who is the more variable in his
affections than the woman; more constant as she is by nature, as well
as firmly anchored down by the strength of her maternal love. It is
therefore on the woman that any loosening of the permanence of the
marriage tie will chiefly fall in untold suffering. "Le mariage c'est la
justice," say the French, who have had experience enough of "les unions
libres"--justice to the wife and mother,