(as if anyone could be a ‘sweet calm’!); moreover:
‘Whether her birth be noble or lowly,
I care no more than the spirit above;’
but there is at least one point upon which this gentleman insists:
‘She must be courteous, she must be holy,
Pure in her spirit, that maiden I love’—
and, being that, she may depend upon the stars falling, and the angels weeping, ere he ceases to love her, his Queen, his Queen!
Ah! the poets have much to answer for. Here is Mr. Longfellow assuring his readers that
‘No one is so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own;’
and here is Sir Edwin Arnold declaring, with equal confidence, that
‘Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
For one lone soul another lonely soul’—
et cætera, et cætera. Is it any wonder that, in the face of such encouragement, young men go on dreaming, each of the dimidium suæ animæ whom he is to meet by-and-by, and framing to that end all sorts of beautiful ideals? It may be that the Shes thus dreamed of are ‘not impossible’—they may ‘arrive;’ but it is as well not to be too sanguine. And, above all, it is as well not to draw too extravagant a picture, if only because you may not be worthy of the original when you see it. Corydon is too disposed to expect in Phyllis charms and virtues for which he might find it difficult to show counterparts in himself. If the lady is to be the pattern of beauty and of goodness, ought not the gentleman to bring an equal amount of capital into the matrimonial firm?