Nor is that which is commonly regarded as the strongest of all cements between husband and wife—the common love of their children—to be accepted as the essence of conjugal love. For childless couples present many of the most remarkable cases of devotion, while in many other cases the children not only fail to rekindle the torch of love, but even arouse jealousies and ill-feeling between their parents by showing a special preference for one or the other. Nevertheless, though not absolutely essential to conjugal love, the common parental feeling is one of its most important and constant ingredients; and there is none of its tributaries which adds more to the deep current of connubial bliss. It enables the parents to enjoy once more the simple pleasures of life, to which they had grown callous; it brings back the peculiarly delicious memories of their own childhood and youth; enables the father to discover his former sweetheart renewed in his daughter, and the mother her former lover in her son; while their common pride in the beauty or accomplishments of the children supplies them with a never-failing topic of conversation and source of sympathy. And this suggests what must be regarded as the real kernel of conjugal attachment—a perennial mutual sympathy regarding not only the affairs of their children but every other domestic affair—in other words, a complete and _necessary_ harmony of feelings and interests. The accent rests on the word _necessary_; for it is this feeling of necessary communion of interests that distinguishes conjugal affection from Love and from friendship, in both of which there is a mutual sympathy, but not so far-reaching and inevitable. A lover’s fame or disgrace may be keenly felt by his sweetheart or his friend, yet society does not associate them with the other’s reputation or disgrace; and if the infamy is too great, they can easily sever their bond, without leaving a spot on their own good name. Not so with husband and wife. His promotion is her honour, and his fall her humiliation; for they are inseparably associated in the public mind, and cannot be parted except through divorce, which is equivalent to social suicide. Therefore theirs is “one glory an’ one shame,” and their destiny to “share each other’s gladness and weep each other’s tears.”