LOVE is the perihelion of women--ay, it is the transit of such a Venus through the sun of the ideal world. During this time of their highest refinement of soul they love whatever we love, even though it be Science, and the best world of beauty within us; and they despise whatever we despise, even though it be dress and gossip. These nightingales sing up to the date of the summer solstice; their marriage-day is their longest day. The devil does not take it all at once, but piecemeal day by day. The firm bands of wedlock tie up the wings of poesy; to the free play of fancy marriage means imprisonment on bread and water. Many a time I have followed about one of these poor birds of paradise or peacocks or Psyches during their honeymoon, and picked up the moulted feathers that were strewn about; and when later the husband complained that he had taken unto himself a bald and unlovely bird, I would show him the wasted treasure. Why is this? Because marriage erects a crust of reality about the ideal world; it is much the same case as with the sphere we live on, which, according to Descartes, is a sun enveloped in an earthy shell. A woman lacks the power which a man has to protect the inner structures of air and fancy against the encroachments of the rough outside. Where shall she seek refuge? In her natural keeper. A man should ever stand guard with a spoon over the fluid silver of the feminine intellect, to remove the scum as it rises, that the regulus of the ideal may shine the brighter. But there are two kinds of men: the Arcadians or lyric poets of life, who love for ever, like Rousseau when his hair was grey--such are not to be comforted when the gilt-edged feminine anthology of wit shows no gold as they turn the leaves, as is apt to be the case in books bordered with gold; second, there are the boorish shepherds of to-day, the plebeian poetasters and practical men of business, who thank God when their enchantress, like other enchantresses, changes into a growling domestic cat, and keeps the house free from vermin.