elf upon it. That is one of
life's most subtle laws. Let us, then, see how it operates in another
field. Sir Francis Jeune, the great divorce judge, said that the
eighth year was the dangerous year in wedded life. More tragedies
occurred in the eighth year than in any other. And Mr. Philip Gibbs
has recently written a novel entitled _The Eighth Year_, in which he
makes the heroine declare that, in marriage, the eighth year is the
fatal year.

'"It's a psychological fact," said Madge. "I work it out in this way.
In the first and second years a wife is absorbed in the experiment of
marriage and in the sentimental phase of love. In the third and fourth
years she begins to study her husband and to find him out. In the
fifth and sixth years, having found him out completely, she makes a
working compromise with life and tries to make the best of it. In the
seventh and eighth years she begins to find out herself. Life has
become prosaic. Her home has become a cage to her. In the eighth year
she must find a way of escape--anyhow, anywhere. And in the eighth
year the one great question is, in what direction will she go? There
are many ways of escape."' And so comes the disaster.

All this seems to show that the eighth year of marriage is like the
fortieth year of life. It is the year in which husband and wife are
called upon to make their supreme stand on behalf of the pansies. And
supposing they do it? Suppose that they make up their minds that
everything shall not be sacrificed to potatoes; what follows? Why, to
be sure, the best follows. Coventry Patmore, in his _Angel in the
House_--the classic of all young husbands and young wives--says that
the years that follow the eighth are the sweetest and the fullest of
all. What, he asks--

What
For sweetness like the ten years' wife,
Whose customary love is not
Her passion, or her play, but life?
With beauties so maturely fair,
Affecting, mild, and manifold,
May girlish charms no more compare
Than apples green with apples gold.
Ah, still unpraised Honoria, Heaven,
When you into my arms it gave,
Left naught hereafter to be given
But grace to feel the good I have.

Here, then, is the crisis reached; the stand successfully made on
behalf of the pansies; and all life fuller and richer for ever
afterwards in consequence. Every man and woman at forty is called upon
for a similar chivalrous effort. At forty we beco