CHAPTER XII LOVE AND POVERTY ‘We shall presently,’ said Mr. Fax, as they pursued their walk, ‘come in sight of a cottage, which I remarked two years ago: a deplorable habitation! A picture of its exterior and interior suspended in some public place, in every town in the kingdom, with a brief commentary subjoined, would operate _in terrorem_ in favour of the best interests of political economy, by placing before the eyes of the rising generation the lamentable consequences of imprudent marriage, and the necessary result of attachment, of which romance is the foundation and marriage the superstructure, without the only cement which will make it wind and water tight—money.’ _Mr. Forester._ Nothing but money! The resemblance Fluellen found between Macedon and Monmouth, because both began with an M, holds equally true of money and marriage: but there seems to be a much stronger connection in the latter case; for marriage is but a body, of which money is the soul. _Mr. Fax._ It is so. It must be so. The constitution of society imperiously commands it to be so. The world of reality is not the world of romance. When a lover talks of lips of coral, teeth of pearl, tresses of gold, and eyes of diamonds, he knows all the while that he is lying by wholesale; and that no baker in England would give him credit for a penny roll on all this display of his Utopian treasury. All the aerial castles that are founded in the contempt of worldly prudence have not half the solidity of the cloud-built towers that surround the setting of the autumnal sun. _Mr. Forester._ I maintain, on the contrary, that, _let all possible calamities be accumulated on two affectionate and congenial spirits, they will find more true happiness in weeping together than they would have found in all the riches of the world, poisoned by the disunion of hearts_.[31] _Mr. Fax._ The disunion of hearts is an evil of another kind. It is not a comparison of evils I wish to institute. That two rich people fettered by the indissoluble bond of marriage, and hating each other cordially, are two as miserable animals as any on the face of the earth, is certain; but that two poor ones, let them love each other ever so fondly, starving together in a garret, are therefore in a less positively wretched condition, is an inference which no logic, I think, can deduce. For the picture you must draw in your mind’s eye is not that of a neatly-dressed, young, healthy-looking couple, weeping in each other’s arms in a clean, however homely cottage, in a fit of tender sympathy; but you must surround them with all the squalid accompaniments of poverty, rags, and famine, the contempt of the world, the dereliction of friends, half a dozen hungry squalling children, all clothed perhaps in the cutting up of an old blanket, duns in presence, bailiffs in prospect, and the long perspective of hopelessness closed by the workhouse or the gaol.