spot if he bought it; the charm of it is subtly dependent upon the
poetry of a simple life, and would be brushed away by the influence of
the things that are necessary to people in the middle class. I remember
dining in a country inn with an English officer whose ideas were
singularly unconventional. We were waited upon by our host's daughter, a
beautiful girl, whose manners were remarkable for their natural elegance
and distinction. It seemed to us both that no lady of rank could be more
distinguished than she was; and my companion said that he thought a
gentleman might do worse than ask that girl to marry him, and settle
down quietly in that quiet mountain village, far from the cares and
vanities of the world. That is a sort of dream which has occurred no
doubt to many an honorable man. Some men have gone so far as to try to
make the dream a reality, and have married the beautiful peasant. But
the difficulty is that she does not remain what she was; she becomes a
sort of make-belief lady, and then her ignorance, which in her natural
condition was a charming _naivete_, becomes an irritating defect. If,
however it were possible for an intellectual man to marry some
simple-hearted peasant girl, and keep her carefully in her original
condition, I seriously believe that the venture would be less perilous
to his culture than an alliance with some woman of our Philistine
classes, equally incapable of comprehending his pursuits, but much more
likely to interfere with them. I once had a conversation on this subject
with a distinguished artist, who is now a widower, and who is certainly
not likely to be prejudiced against marriage by his own experience,
which had been an unusually happy one. His view was that a man devoted
to art might marry either a plain-minded woman, who would occupy herself
exclusively with household matters and shield his peace by taking these
cares upon herself, or else a woman quite capable of entering into his
artistic life; but he was convinced that a marriage which exposed him to
unintelligent criticism and interference would be dangerous in the
highest degree. And of the two kinds of marriage which he considered
possible he preferred the former, that with the entirely ignorant and
simple person from whom no interference was to be apprehended. He
considered the first Madame Ingres the true model of an artist's wife,
because she did all in her power to guard her husband's peace against
the daily cares o