ng
to find, after all, how difficult it is to make such a list at all. It
is easier to make a list of women who have loved perfectly than a list
of men. Two rather painful considerations arise. Is it because, after
all, it is so rare, so almost abnormal an experience for one to love
purely, passionately, and permanently, that the difficulty of making
such a list arises? There are plenty of books, both imaginative and
biographical, to choose from, and yet the perfect companionship seems
very rare. Or is it that we nowadays exaggerate the whole matter? That
would be a conclusion to which I would not willingly come; but it is
quite clear that we have transcendentalised the power of love very much
of late. Is this due to the immense flood of romances that have
overwhelmed our literature? Does love really play so large a part in
people's lives as romances would have us think? Or do the immense
number of romances rather show that love does really play a greater
part than anything else in our lives? The transcendental conception of
love has found a high and passionate expression in the sonnets of
Rossetti, yet all that we know of Rossetti would seem to prove that in
his case it was actual rather than transcendental; and he is to be
classed in the matter of love rather among its voluptuaries and slaves
than among its true and harmonious exponents. I am disposed to think
that with men, at all events, or at least with Englishmen of the
present day, love is rather a bewildering episode than a guiding
principle; and that some of the happiest alliances have been those in
which passion has tranquilly transformed itself into a true and gentle
companionship. This would seem to prove that love was as a rule a
physical rather than a spiritual passion, cutting across life rather
than flowing in its channels.

And then, too, the further consideration intervenes: Can any one, in
reflecting upon the instances of great and loving relationships that
have come within the range of his experience, name a single case in
which a deep passion has ever been conceived and consummated, without
the existence of physical charm of some kind in the woman who has been
the object of the passion? I do not, of course, limit charm to regular
and conventional beauty. But I cannot myself recall a single instance
of such a passion being evoked by a woman destitute of physical
attractiveness. The charm may be that of voice, of glance, of bearing,
of gesture, but t