It says much for our Anglo-Saxon wives that their constancy has passed into many proverbs.  When a woman really loves the man who marries her, the match is generally a happy one; but, even where it is not, the constancy of the wife’s affection is something to be wondered at and admired.  No after ill-usage, no neglect, or want of love, will remove the affection once given.  No doubt all women, when they fall in love, do so with that which they conceive to be great and noble in the character of the object.  But they still love on when all the glitter of novelty has fallen off, and when they have been behind the scenes and found how bare and gloomy was the framework of the scene they admired.  All illusions may be gone; the hero may have sunk into the cowardly braggart; the saint into the hypocritical sinner; the noble aspirant into a man whose mouth alone utters but empty words which his heart can never feel; but still true love remains, “nor alters where it alteration finds.”  The duration of this passion, the constancy of this affection, surprises many; but, adds a writer, such persons—­

             “Know not woman, the blest being
    Who, like a pitying angel, gifts the mean
    And sordid nature even with more love
    Than falls to the lot of him who towers above
    His fellow-men; like parasitic flowers
    That grow not on high temples, where the showers
    And light of heaven might nourish, but alone
    Cloth the rent altar and the fallen stone.”

There must be some great reason, some combination of feeling, for this.  M. Ernest Feydeau, in a popular story of very bad principles, seems to hit the right nail on the head.  “What woman,” he asks, “would not love her husband, and be ever true to him, without thinking of a lover, if her husband would give her that which a lover gives her, not alone attention, politeness, and a cold friendship, but a little of that balm which is the very essense of our existence—­a little love?” Probably these very bad men, for whom women will so generously ruin themselves, are, by their nature, soft and flattering; and, after cruelties and excesses, will, by soft words and Belial tongues, bind to them yet more closely the hearts of their victims.

The ideal wife has been often painted, but the real far exceeds her.  When Ulric von Hutten wrote to Frederick, he painted such a portrait as must have made that staunch advocate for the marriage of the clergy glow with admiration. “Da mihi uxorem,” he commences.  “Get me a wife, Frederick, after my own heart, such as you know I should like—­neat, young, fairly educated, modest, patient; one with whom I may joke and play, and yet be serious; to whom I may babble and talk, mixing hearty fun and kisses together; one whose presence will lighten my anxiety and soften the tumult of my cares.”