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