430 MORE POT-POURRI 



other name, and which in time may grow into a very 

 real and noble friendship. This is perhaps the most 

 perfect developement of happiness in marriage that can 

 occur, but no doubt it is rare. 



Mr. Michael Field, in a little poem of great delicacy, 

 shows how Cupid may sometimes heal the wound he has 

 himself inflicted : 



Ah, Eros does not always smite 



With cruel, shining dart, 

 Whose bitter point, with sudden might 



Rends the unhappy heart 

 Not thus forever purple stained 



And sore with steely touch, 

 Else were its living fountain drained 



Too oft and over much. 

 O'er it sometimes the boy will deign 



Sweep the shaft's feathered end : 

 And friendship rises, without pain, 



Where the white plumes descend. 



Mrs. Holland, in her charming letters, remarks on a 

 saying of Mr. George Meredith's in ' The Egoist 7 : ' The 

 scene in which, while his mother's death is imminent, he 

 pictures his own, and wants to make Clara swear, is 

 extraordinarily good, and that word of hers "I can 

 only be of value to you, Willoughby, by being myself" 

 contains, to my mind, the very gospel of marriage. 

 So many marriages are more or less spoilt by the man 

 wanting the woman to be his echo not his friend.' 

 Perfect friendship between men and women can only 

 come, I think, after love not before it. 



Jowett felt the extreme difficulty of friendship between 

 men and women, and said : ' Hegel was right in con- 

 demning the union of souls without bodies. Such 

 schemes of imaginary pleasure are wholly unsatisfactory. 

 The characters of human beings are not elevated enough 

 for them. The religious ideal, the philosophical ideal, is 



