Concluding Remarks.
However short a marriage may fall of the high ideal standpoint, there should never be recrimination in public between man and wife, nor the utterance of taunts as to the avarice, expediency, or cowardice that may have influenced either side in the presence of a third person. Few attain to the highest happiness of which we are capable in this state: few, perhaps, make the most of what they have; yet it is very rare to find a married woman who honestly wishes herself single, and that is a powerful argument in favour of an institution which seems to give the weaker sex her full share of the burden. There is much soul-disquieting discussion nowadays on the relative positions of the sexes. The following lines express that which surely might make marriage a very heaven on earth:--
"This is Woman's need;
To be a beacon when the air is dense,
A bower of peace, a lifelong recompense--
This is the sum of Woman's worldly creed.
And what is Man the while? And what his will?
And what the furtherance of his worldly hope?
To turn to Faith, to turn, as to a rope
A drowning sailor; all his blood to spill