The Express.
London, England, 1868-07-22 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, WEDNESDAY

throughout being that it is their abominable be-
haviour which is et the root of most, if not all, of
the unhappinees which arises from Omsk greeter
or lees, of the primary relations betweea men and

On the one hand, GOD forbid that we should say
a word against the purity of women. On the
other, various weighty considerations forbid that
we should enter into vexed questions about
courage, before all things, for men, and
purity, before all things, for women. But we
do distinctly assert that no woman has a vocation
for a married life who can write or speak with
insolence, or even with airs of superiority,
about men. The first condition of married
happiness is that each of the conjuges
should have an instinctive and thoroughly
genial respect for the other, simply as man
or as woman ; a kindly, natural regard, which
does not wait to moralise, but knows or ap-
prehends its proper human complement, honours
its peculiar qualities, and does not sniff the air
over such exaggerations of those qualities as fall
short of cruelty or baseness. No goodness can be
too great for a man to aim at; no goodness can
be too great for a woman to aim at. But while
we decline to go into the question whether there
are snore husbands heroie in their way, or wives
heroic in their way, or whether there aro
six of one and half a dosen of the
other (which, however, we incline to think a largo
and fair observation of human life must lead any
observer to conclude), it is due to one side of the
subject to point out, for the especial guidance of
young and inexperienced men, full of idealisms
and vague earnestness most perilous to themselves,
that, whatever may be the faults of men, there
are thousands of women who have no voca-
tion for marriage because they have no
natural respect for men as men. Such women
frequently drift into marriage, and much
more frequently than men who have
the corresponding defect ; simply because women
are more dependent, more creatures of routine,
more vain, more anxious to show that they are not
slighted, and, every way, more ready to do " the
" proper thing." When a woman of this quite
frequent type does marry, an unhappy home is the
necessary consequence. She may have every con-
ceivable good quality, but one, that a wife can
possess ; she may be kind, clever, a housekeeper, a
mother, and superficially blameless in all her rela-
tions ; and yet she may make her husband un-
happy, because her nature is essentially epicene.
Every quick observer, of any considerable know-
ledge of life, can lay his finger upon homes where
married couples are obviously happy in every par-
ticular of their lives but one—their marriedneee.
And in too many of these cases one notes in the
woman, first and foremost, a plain want of voca-
;tion for the true conjugal life. Some of the lite-
rary spokeswomen of the order are insolent in the
:extreme, and they do incalculable harm to the
;women's cause by the indignant disgust they
!excite in the minds of ths very men whose
{assistance would be useful. The Subject, if we
:pursued it to its receesee, would carry us far-
ther than a newspaper can. ge,, ,aut . if there:
are any readers who utterly- feir to understess4
what we have been able to soy within per-
mitted limits, we must part with them in some
words of Idwrosr in " Colasterion," in reference
to one of his opponents " Another thing
" troubles him, that I called marriage the rays-
" ' tory of joy.' Let it still trouble him ; for
" what bath he to do either with joy or with
" mystery ? "