profane, or something civil, or something of all things? Is it
an expression of an inexplicable love, the elective affinity of souls in
delicate accord with one another; or is it a duty, or a partner****p, or
a mere convenience, or the custom of certain countries - or is it a
little of all these? Is one to order the music for it from the town
musician or the church organist, or is one to have a little from both?
Is it the minister or the police inspector who is to make the speech and
enroll the names in the book of life - or in the town register? Does
marriage blow a tune on a comb, or does it listen to the whisperings
"like to those of the fairies from the grottoes of a summer night"?
And now every Darby imagines he performed such a potpourri, such
incomparably complex music, in getting married - and imagines that he is
still performing it while living a married life! My dear fellow
banqueters, ought we not, in default of a wedding present and
congratulations, give each of the conjugal partners, and marriage
itself, demerits for repeated inattentiveness? It is taxing enough to
express a single idea in one's life, but to think something so
complicated as marriage and, consequently, bring it under one head, to
think something so complicated and yet to do justice to each and every
element in it, and have everything present at the same time - verily, he
is a great man who can accomplish all this! And still every Benedict
accomplished it - so he does, no doubt, for does he not say that he does
it unconsciously? But if this is to be done unconsciously it must be
through some higher form of unconsciousness permeating all one's
reflective powers. But not a word is said about this! And to ask any
married man about it means just wasting one's time.
He who has once committed a piece of folly will constantly be pursued by
its consequences. In the case of marriage the folly consists in one
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