heir own lives and their
husband's a burden to them. Without having time given them to mature
their ideas, these latter are hurried into matrimony while still
children, without having formed a conception of the terrible
responsibility that attaches itself to every human soul who agrees to
join itself to another.

These latter do not make good matches in any one sense of the word. The
struggling barrister, the clerk, the curate, the brainless masher--such
are their prey; and if they make richer prizes than these, still the
match cannot be called _good;_ presently there is dis-union as the
clever husband finds the pretty but nonsensical wife utterly unable to
follow him through the paths of life that Fate has opened out to him.

It is a common idea that men care only for beauty, and are to be
attracted by no lesser virtue--if virtue it may be called. This is a
most gross error that even the earliest of our thinkers has laid bare.
What says Thomas Carew:

"But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires:--
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes."

We see, then, that there are things more desirable to the masculine
mind than the mere charms of the flesh. To be beautiful is a good
thing, for which we should thank Nature--to be attractive, morally,
rather than physically, is, however, a thing for which we should thank
Nature even more, if she be good enough to have endowed us with that
lasting quality. Let a girl learn once for all that her little
schoolgirl airs and graces can please only the unintellectual of her
set, that to make a good match, in the most noble sense of the word, is
to form herself to be the equal of the man she marries, and all will be
right. I speak advisedly, because a girl who has the courage to so plan
out her future is very unlikely to wed with any save the most desirable
of the other sex.

But what _is_ a good match? Does it mean a man with money only, or
position only, or intellect only, or only a capacity for being good
humored under each and every circumstance? The common acceptation of
the term means a man in such a moneyed position that he can place his
wife considerably above that of her friends, so far as money goes. And
that is a very good thing too, so far as it goes. But to be rich is not
everything! The merely sordid, the entirely uneducated can rise to this
height, bu