“How the inferior of the two drags the other down to his or her level; how the cares of a family ‘breed meanness in their souls.’... They cannot undertake any noble enterprise, such as makes the names of men and women famous, from domestic considerations. Too late their eyes are opened; they were taken unawares, and desire to part company. Better, he would say, a ‘little love at the beginning,’ for heaven might have increased it; but now their foolish fondness has changed into mutual dislike.... How much nobler, in conclusion he will say, is friendship, which does not receive unmeaning praises from novelists and poets, is not exacting or exclusive, is not impaired by familiarity, is much less expensive, is not so likely to take offence, seldom changes, and may be dissolved from time to time without the assistance of the courts.” Dr. Johnson, in a letter to Baretti, points out the difference between Love and Marriage: “In love, as in every other passion of which hope is the essence, we ought always to remember the uncertainty of events. There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman; and if all would happen that a lover fancies, I know not what other terrestrial happiness would deserve pursuit. But love and marriage are different states. Those who are to suffer the evils together, and to suffer often for the sake of one another, _soon lose that tenderness of look_ and that benevolence of mind which arose from the participation of unmingled pleasure and successive amusement.” “Lose that tenderness of look!” Have you reflected that it is that exquisite tenderness of look which chiefly fascinated you, and have you not noticed that, as Johnson implies, married people rarely regard one another with that look which constantly intoxicated them during Courtship? For “beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense,” says Addison; or, as Hazlitt puts it, “though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.” “With most marriages,” says Goethe, “it is not long till things assume a very piteous look.” Raleigh: “If thou marry beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which, perchance, will neither last nor please thee one year.” Seneca: “Beauty is such a fleeting blossom, how can wisdom rely upon its momentary delight?” Howells: “Marian Butler was at that period full of those airs of self-abnegation with which women adorn themselves in the last days of betrothal and the first of marriage, and never afterwards.” Alexander Walker: “It looks as if woman were in possession of most enjoyments, and as if man had only an illusion held out to him to make him labour for her.”