their children, he conceived in a truly antique spirit: not to
blame others, but to constrain himself. It was not to blame, I
repeat, that he held these views; for others, he could make a large
allowance; and yet he tacitly expected of his friends and his wife
a high standard of behaviour. Nor was it always easy to wear the
armour of that ideal.

Acting upon these beliefs; conceiving that he had indeed 'given
himself' (in the full meaning of these words) for better, for
worse; painfully alive to his defects of temper and deficiency in
charm; resolute to make up for these; thinking last of himself:
Fleeming was in some ways the very man to have made a noble, uphill
fight of an unfortunate marriage. In other ways, it is true he was
one of the most unfit for such a trial. And it was his beautiful
destiny to remain to the last hour the same absolute and romantic
lover, who had shown to his new bride the flag-draped vessels in
the Mersey. No fate is altogether easy; but trials are our
touchstone, trials overcome our reward; and it was given to
Fleeming to conquer. It was given to him to live for another, not
as a task, but till the end as an enchanting pleasure. 'People may
write novels,' he wrote in 1869, 'and other people may write poems,
but not a man or woman among them can write to say how happy a man
may be, who is desperately in love with his wife after ten years of
marriage.' And again in 1885, after more than twenty-six years of
marriage, and within but five weeks of his death: 'Your first
letter from Bournemouth,' he wrote, 'gives me heavenly pleasure -
for which I thank Heaven and you too - who are my heaven on earth.'
The mind hesitates whether to say that such a man has been more
good or more fortunate.