Nevertheless public sentiment is continually making war on Plutus and Minerva, and siding with Venus. Probably the mercantile element in marriage will not die out till a few weeks before the millennium, although Herbert Spencer is optimistic enough to believe it will sooner. “After wife-stealing,” he says, “came wife-purchase; and then followed the usages which made, and continue to make, considerations of property predominate over considerations of personal preference. Clearly, wife-purchase and husband-purchase (which exists in some semi-civilised societies), though they have lost their original gross form, persist in disguised forms. Already some disapproval of those who marry for money or position is expressed; and this growing stronger may be expected to purify the monogamic union, by making it in all cases real instead of being in some cases nominal.” It is indeed a most hopeful sign of progress, this strong and growing modern sentiment in favour of Romantic Love as against rival motives matrimonial. Novelists, when the wills of the lovers and the parents clash, invariably and unconsciously side with the lovers; and should a novelist make an exception, many of his readers would close the book, and the others would finish it under protest and disappointedly. Even when we read a newspaper reporter’s thrilling and dramatic narrative of the elopement of a foolish young couple, fresh from the high-school, our hearts throb with sympathetic anxiety lest the irate parent should succeed in capturing the runaway couple. No doubt this instinctive modern prejudice in favour of Romantic Love will ultimately throw a halo of sacredness around it, which will raise Cupid’s will to the dignity of an Eleventh Commandment—a consummation devoutedly to be wished; for although the conjugal affection which grows out of Romantic Love is not always deeper than that which results from unions not based on Love, the physical and mental qualities of the children commonly show at a glance whether or not the parents were brought together by Sexual Selection. LEADING MOTIVES