loves the man who marries her,
the match is generally a happy one; but, even where it is not, the
constancy of the wife's affection is something to be wondered at and
admired. No after ill-usage, no neglect, or want of love, will remove
the affection once given. No doubt all women, when they fall in love, do
so with that which they conceive to be great and noble in the character
of the object. But they still love on when all the glitter of novelty
has fallen off, and when they have been behind the scenes and found how
bare and gloomy was the framework of the scene they admired. All
illusions may be gone; the hero may have sunk into the cowardly
braggart; the saint into the hypocritical sinner; the noble aspirant
into a man whose mouth alone utters but empty words which his heart can
never feel; but still true love remains, "nor alters where it alteration
finds." The duration of this passion, the constancy of this affection,
surprises many; but, adds a writer, such persons--

"Know not woman, the blest being
Who, like a pitying angel, gifts the mean
And sordid nature even with more love
Than falls to the lot of him who towers above
His fellow-men; like parasitic flowers
That grow not on high temples, where the showers
And light of heaven might nourish, but alone
Cloth the rent altar and the fallen stone."

There must be some great reason, some combination of feeling, for this.
M. Ernest Feydeau, in a popular story of very bad principles, seems to
hit the right nail on the head. "What woman," he asks, "would not love
her husband, and be ever true to him, without thinking of a lover, if
her husband would give her that which a lover gives her, not alone
attention, politeness, and a cold friendship, but a little of that balm
which is the very essense of our existence--a little love?" Probably
these very bad men, for whom women will so generously ruin themselves,
are, by their nature, soft and flattering; and, after cruelties and
excesses, will, by soft words and Belial tongues, bind to them yet more
closely the hearts of their victims.

The ideal wife has been often painted, but the real far exceeds her.
When Ulric von Hutten wrote to Frederick, he painted such a portrait as
must have made that staunch advocate for the marriage of the clergy glow
with admiration. "_Da mihi uxorem_," he commences. "Get me a wife,
Frederick, after my own heart, such as you know I should like--neat,