We dare to go even further, and to declare that every woman knows in her heart--though never, never will she admit it to you--within which fold she was intended to pass. Is it an exaggeration to say that many a girl marries out of the superabundance of the maternal instinct, though she may the while be absolutely ignorant of the motive power at work? Believing herself to be wildly enamoured of the man of her (or her parents’) choice, she is in reality only in love with the nursery of an after-day. Of worship between husband and wife, as a factor in the transaction, she knows nothing, or likely enough she imagines it present when it is the sweet passion of pity, or the more subtle patronage of bestowal, one or both, which are urging her forward into marriage. Gratitude, none the less real because unrealised, towards the man who thus enables her to fulfil her true destiny--the saving of souls alive--has also its share in the complex energy. Well for the husband of this wife if he allows himself gradually to occupy the position of eldest and most important of her children, to whom indeed a somewhat larger liberty is accorded, but from whom also more is required. In return for this submission boundless will be the care and devotion bestowed upon his upbringing day by day. He will be foolish if he utters aloud, or even says in the silence of his heart, that motherhood is good, but that wifehood was what he wanted. It would be but a bootless kicking against the pricks. For he has chosen the mother-woman, and it is beyond his power, or that of any other specialist, to effect the fundamental change for which his soul may long. It only remains for him to make the best of a very good bargain, and one to which it is very probable his strict personal merits may hardly have entitled him. If such a marriage is childless, it may still be a very useful one. Nature’s accommodations often verge on the miraculous. The unemployed maternal instincts of the wife easily work themselves out in an unlimited and universal auntdom. It must be confessed that bad blunders are apt to ensue, but where the intentions are good, the pavement should not be too closely scanned. In fiction these are the Dinahs, the Romolas, the Dorotheas, the Mary Garths. Dear to the soul of the female writer is the maternal type. With loving, if tiresome frequency, she is presented to us again and yet again. In truth we sometimes grow a little weary of her saintly monotony. But as it is given to few of us to have the courage of our tastes, we bear with her, as we bear with other not altogether pleasing appliances, presented to us by earnest friends, with the assurance that they are for our good, or for our education, or some other equally superfluous purpose.