In a more ordinary man, destined to more commonplace fortunes, they might well be regarded as promising that enduring wedded love which strikes root downward and bears fruit upward, steadily growing in depth and devotion as the years roll by.

But Nelson was not an ordinary man, and from that more humble happiness a childless marriage further debarred him.

He could rise far higher, and, alas! descend far lower as he followed the radiant vision,--the image of his own mind rather than an external reality,--the ideal, which, whether in fame or in love, beckoned him onward.

The calm, even, and wholly matter-of-fact appreciation of his wife's estimable traits can now be seen in the light of his after career, and its doubtful augury descried; for to idealize was an essential attribute of his temperament.

Her failure, even in the heyday of courtship, to arouse in him any extravagance of emotion, any illusive exaltation of her merits, left vacant that throne in his mind which could be permanently occupied only by a highly wrought excellence,--even though that were the purely subjective creation of his own enthusiasm.