In this matter, it must be admitted, woman’s Love is superior to man’s. “Oh, Arthur,” says Ella, in the _Fliegende Blätter_, “how happy I would be alone with you on a quiet island in the distant ocean!” “Have you any other desire, dearest Ella?” “Oh yes, do get me a season ticket for the opera.” _True Love is transient._—Boswell tells us that Johnson “laughed at the notion that a man can never be really in love but once, and considered it a mere romantic fancy.” And though this romantic fancy is as current as ever in society and literature, Johnson was right in his verdict, as usual. True Love, indeed, is absolutely exclusive of every other Love _while it lasts_; but it rarely lasts more than two or three years; and then the heart, freed from one monopoly, is ready for another, perhaps even more tyrannical, _while it lasts_. That Love is transient is most fortunate, for it is, in its truest and most ardent form, such a consuming fever, that the strongest man would not be able to endure its mingled ecstasies and anguish more than a few years. The lover’s fancies are his only food; coarser nourishment he scorns; he loses his appetite, and becomes “pale and interesting”—to women, who like to see a powerful man thus wincing under their superior might, and melting away before their radiant beauty. Yet its transitoriness detracts not in the least from the magic and the charm of Love. It is in the life of man what the flowering period is in the life of a plant. As, for the sake of its fragrant blossoms, a plant is tenderly nursed and watered weeks and months though it flowers but a week; so, even if brief Love were the only flower of life, yet would life be worth living for its sake alone. How long Love may last depends on individuals and circumstances. Sainte-Beuve, I believe, has said that it never can outlive five years. Favouring circumstances are slight obstacles, rivalries and jealousies, short absences, etc.; while long absences, the distractions of travel, professional occupations, etc., tend to shorten it. In uninterrupted absence, without epistolary encouragement, the most ardent Love would hardly survive a year, unless the lover lived on a desert island, with no other woman to engross his attention. Return, however, is apt to bring on a relapse, as with Henry Esmond, who “went away from his mistress, and was cured a half-dozen times; he came back to her side, and instantly fell ill again of the fever.” Thus it is the fate of all unrequited Love to die for want of food; or, if successful, to leave the stormy ocean of passion and sail into the more tranquil haven of conjugal affection. Woman’s Love is less transient than man’s, because there are fewer ambitions to neutralise it.