420 MORE POT-POURRI 



There is a love which never tries to call itself by any 

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

 and noble friendship. This is perhaps the most perfect 

 development 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 



Bends the unhappy heart 

 Not thus for ever purple-stained 



And sore with steely touch, 

 Else were its living fountain drained 



Too oft and overmuch. 

 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 ' : ' 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 far 



