cques and the Fool in _Lear_, although we can hardly imagine they
would ever marry, keep single out of a cynical humour or for a broken
heart, and not, as we do nowadays, from a spirit of incredulity and
preference for the single state. For that matter, if you turn to George
Sand's French version of _As You Like It_ (and I think I can promise you
will like it but little), you will find Jacques marries Celia just as
Orlando marries Rosalind.

At least there seems to have been much less hesitation over marriage in
Shakespeare's days; and what hesitation there was was of a laughing
sort, and not much more serious, one way or the other, than that of
Panurge. In modern comedies the heroes are mostly of Benedick's way of
thinking, but twice as much in earnest, and not one quarter so
confident. And I take this diffidence as a proof of how sincere their
terror is. They know they are only human after all; they know what gins
and pitfalls lie about their feet; and how the shadow of matrimony
waits, resolute and awful, at the cross-roads. They would wish to keep
their liberty; but if that may not be, why, God's will be done! "What,
are you afraid of marriage?" asks Cecile, in _Maitre Guerin_. "Oh, mon
Dieu, non!" replies Arthur; "I should take chloroform." They look
forward to marriage much in the same way as they prepare themselves for
death: each seems inevitable; each is a great Perhaps, and a leap into
the dark, for which, when a man is in the blue devils, he has specially
to harden his heart. That splendid scoundrel, Maxime de Trailles, took
the news of marriages much as an old man hears the deaths of his
contemporaries. "C'est desesperant," he cried, throwing himself down in
the arm-chair at Madame Schontz's; "c'est desesperant, nous nous marions
tous!" Every marriage was like another grey hair on his head; and the
jolly church-bells seemed to taunt him with his fifty years and fair
round belly.

The fact is, we are much more afraid of life than our ancestors, and
cannot find it in our hearts either to marry or not to marry. Marriage
is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age. The friendships of
men are vastly agreeable, but they are insecure. You know all the time
that one friend will marry and put you to the door; a second accept a
situation in China, and become no more to you than a name, a
reminiscence, and an occasional crossed letter, very laborious to read;
a third will take up with some religious crotchet a