ould lovely woman ever condescend to dabble in political economy? Can
a gentleman be a gentleman when logic requires the truth? Will dry
dissertation fill up the place of compliment and flowery talk? Will
agricultural measures,--Mill on Liberty,--Buckle on Civilization,--High,
Low, or Middle Church,--Pleiocene periods,--Hind's new comet, and the
division of labor, suffer us to enjoy life as we used, and to amuse
ourselves with the innocent prattle of ladies' tongues?" Rosy, posy,
pinky, honey, pepper_mint_, and sugar-plummy! "One part of management in
husbands lies in a judicious mixture of good-humor, attention, flattery,
and compliments." Here, helping him to his meaning, which he flounders
after in vain through a page of wish-wash, we may explain that he is not
speaking, as would naturally be supposed, of the manner in which
husbands manage wives, but, advancing in his usual crab-fashion, of the
manner in which wives manage husbands; nor by flattery let it be
imagined for a moment that he means flattery, but "an offered flower, a
birthday gift, a song when we are weary, a smile when we are sad, a look
which no eye but our own will see," in which, if truth is, as has been
said, "a fixed central sun," our comet must be considered in its
perihelion. And having thus set him on his feet again, let us see
whether he can stand by himself a tottering moment or two.

The preventive of these ill-assorted marriages (which for the greater
part are never made) is, if the young men "only chose by sense _or_
fancy, _or_ because they saw some good quality in a girl,--if they were
not all captivated by the face alone," (Query: What is being captivated
by a face but choosing by fancy? and what is choosing by sense but
choosing by some good quality?) "every Jill would have her Jack, and
pair off happily, like the lovers in a comedy." At the same time he
agrees with Swift that the reason why so many marriages are unhappy is
because young ladies spend their "time in making nets and not in making
cages."

We have said that the Gentle Man is dull even when he hates. It is true,
so far as he has anything to do with expressing his hatred; yet the time
for the publication of his dulness is so inaptly--or perhaps we should
rather say so aptly--chosen, that the incongruity awakens our sense of
the ridiculous, while a certain childlike confidingness with which he
credits any statement that makes against the objects of his dislike
comes nearer t