The questions debated in this style by our young couple were surprisingly numerous; as, for example, whether their favorite copy of Turner should hang in the parlor or in the library,--whether their pet little landscape should hang against the wall, or be placed on an easel,--whether the bust of the Venus de Milos should stand on the marble table in the hall, or on a bracket in the library; all of which points were debated with a breadth of survey, a richness of imagery, a vigor of discussion, that would be perfectly astonishing to any one who did not know how much two very self-willed argumentative people might find to say on any point under heaven. Everything in classical antiquity,--everything in Kugler’s “Hand-Book of Painting,"--every opinion of living artists,--besides questions social, moral, and religious,--all mingled in the grand _mêlée_: because there is nothing in creation that is not somehow connected with everything else. Dr. Johnson has said,--“There are a thousand familiar disputes which reason never can decide; questions that elude investigation, and make logic ridiculous; cases where something must be done, and where little can be said.” With all deference to the great moralist, we must say that this statement argues a very limited knowledge of the resources of talk possessed by two very cultivated and very self-willed persons fairly pitted against each other in practical questions; the logic may indeed be ridiculous, but such people as our Hero and Leander find no cases under the sun where something is to be done, yet where little can be said. And these wretched wranglings, this interminable labyrinth of petty disputes, waste and crumble away that high ideal of truth and tenderness, which the real, deep sympathies and actual worth of their characters entitled them to form. Their married life is not what they expected; at times they are startled by the reflection that they have somehow grown unlovely to each other; and yet, if Leander goes away to pass a week, and thinks of his Hero in the distance, he can compare no other woman to her; and the days seem long and the house empty to Hero while he is gone, both wonder at themselves when they look over their petty bickerings, but neither knows exactly how to catch the little fox that spoils their vines. It is astonishing how much we think about ourselves, yet to how little purpose,--how very clever people will talk and wonder about themselves and each other, and yet go on year after year, not knowing how to use either themselves or each other,--not having as much practical philosophy in the matter of their own characters and that of their friends as they have in respect of the screws of their gas-fixtures or the management of their water-pipes.