"Yes, love indeed is light from heaven: A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared, by Allah given, To lift from earth our low desire. Devotion wafts the mind above, But heaven itself descends in love; A feeling from the Godhead caught, To wean from self each sordid thought; A ray of Him who formed the whole; A glory circling round the soul!" It has been well said, "The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence." Both these conditions meet in a well-chosen alliance. Married people may so abuse matrimony as to make it a very school for scandal; but it may and ought to be what Sir Thomas More's home was said to be, "a school and exercise of the Christian religion." "No wrangling, no angry word, was heard in it; no one was idle; every one did his duty with alacrity and not without a temperate cheerfulness." This atmosphere of love and duty which pervaded his home must have been owing in a great measure to the household goodness of Sir Thomas himself. For though his first wife was all that he could have desired, his second was ill-tempered and little capable of appreciating the lofty principles that actuated her husband. "I have lived--I have laboured--I have loved. I have lived in them I loved, laboured for them I loved, loved them for whom I laboured." Well might Sir Thomas add after this reflection, "My labour hath not been in vain;" for to say nothing of its effect upon others, how it must have disciplined his own character! "There is nothing," you say, "in the drudgery of domestic life to soften." No; but, as Robertson of Brighton says, "a great deal to strengthen with the sense of duty done, self-control, and power. Besides you cannot calculate how much corroding rust is kept off, how much of disconsolate, dull despondency is hindered. Daily use is not the jeweller's mercurial polish, but it will keep your little silver pencil from tarnishing." "Family life," says Sainte-Beuve, "may be full of thorns and cares; but they are fruitful: all others are dry thorns." And again: "If a man's home at a certain period of life does not contain children, it will probably be found filled with follies or with vices." Even if it were a misfortune to be married, which we emphatically deny, has not the old Roman moralist taught us that, "to escape misfortune is to want instruction, and that to live at ease is to live in ignorance"? Misfortune to be married? Rather not. "Life with all it yields of joy and woe And hope and fear.... Is just our chance o' the prize of the learning love-- How love might be, hath been indeed, and is." CHAPTER VIII. BEING MARRIED.