"Who hath not felt that breath in the air,
A perfume and freshness strange and rare,
A warmth in the light, and a bliss everywhere,
When young hearts yearn together?
All sweets below, and all sunny above,
Oh! there's nothing in life like making love,
Save making hay in fine weather."
Let cynics say what they will, the honeymoon, when not greatly mismanaged, is a halcyon period. It is a delightful lull between two distinct states of existence, and the married man is not to be envied who can recall no pleasant reminiscences of it. What profane outsiders consider very dull has a charm of its own to honeymoon lovers who "illumine life with dreaming," and who see—
"Golden visions wave and hover,
Golden vapours, waters streaming,
Landscapes moving, changing, gleaming!"
Still, we cannot but think that if a wedding tour must be taken it should be short, quiet, free-and-easy, and inexpensive. At some future time, when the young people are less agitated and have learned to understand each other better, the time and money saved will be available for a more extended holiday. During the honeymoon there should be "marches hymeneal in the land of the ideal" rather than globe-trotting; "thoughts moved o'er fields Elysian" rather than over the perplexing pages of "Bradshaw's General Railway and Steam Navigation Guide."
In reference to the honeymoon, as to other matters, people's opinions differ according to their temperaments and circumstances. So we shall conclude this chapter by quoting two nearly opposite opinions, and ask our readers to decide for themselves.
In the "Memoir of Daniel Macmillan" his opinion is thus stated: "That going out for the honeymoon is a most wise and useful invention; it enables you to be so constantly together, and to obtain a deeper knowledge of each other; and it also helps one to see and feel the preciousness of such intimacy as nothing else could. Intercourse in the presence of others never leads below the surface, and it is in the very depths of our being that true calm, deep and true peace and love lie. Nothing so well prepares for the serious duties of after-life."
"As to long honeymoons," says the Bishop of Rochester, "most sensible people have come utterly to disbelieve in them. They are a forced homage to utterly false ideas; they are a waste of money at a moment when every shilling is wanted for much more pressing objects; they are a loss of time, which soon comes to be dreary and weary. Most of all, they are a risk for love, which ought not so soon to be so unpleasantly tested by the inevitable petulances of a secret ennui. Six days by all means, and then, oh! happy friends, go straight home.... Whenever you come back, six weeks hence or one, you will have just as much to stand the fire of a little hard staring which won't hurt you, and of bright pleasantness which need not vex you; and the sooner you are at home, the sooner you will find out what married happiness means."
