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 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 _prefer_ that also!" There is a common note in
these three illustrations of the modern 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 desire 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 must quote a few
phrases. "The young lady is in every sense formed to make one of your
disposition really happy. She has a pleasing voice, with which she
accompanies her musical instrument with judgment. She has an easy
politeness in her manners, neither free nor reserved. She is a good
housekeeper and a good economist, and yet of a generous disposition. As
to her internal accomplishments, I have reason to speak still more
highly of them: good sense without vanity, a penetrating judgment
without a disposition to satire, with about as much religion as my
William likes, struck me with a wish that she was my William's wife."
That is about the tune: pleasing voice, moderate good looks,
unimpeachable internal accomplishments after the style of the copy-book,
with about as much religion as my William likes; and then, with all
speed, to church.

To deal plainly, if they only married when they fell in love, most
people would die unwed; and among the others, there would be not a few
tumultuous households. The Lion is the King of Beasts, but he is
scarcely suitable for a domestic pet. In the same way, I suspect love
is rather too violent a passion to make, in all cases, a good domestic
sentiment. Like other violent excitements, it throws up not only what is
best, but what is worst and smallest, in men's characters. Just as some
people are malicious in drink, or brawling and virulent under the
influence of religious feeling, some are moody, jealous, and exacting
when they are in love, who are honest, downright, good-hearted fellows
enough in the everyday af