A gay deceiver is no enviable character for any respectable man to wear. No man of mental or moral worth would voluntarily assume it. But a spinster coming to a court of justice, and saying to the defendant, “You have taken my heart, give me your purse,” is no very desirable position for a woman, though she may have the fortitude and strength of mind of a Mrs. Caudle herself. At any rate, the legal view of woman is very different to the poetical one, and for ourselves we infinitely prefer the latter. The view of the jury is, that a woman not marrying a man who has evidently no love for her, or he would not have married another, is to the plaintiff an injury—we think it is a happy escape—and an injury which deepens as the courtship lengthens. The jury reasons that the plaintiff, Mary Brown, is as good-tempered a girl as ever lived—that provided she could but marry she did not care who made her his wife. The position of the sexes is reversed, and the woman sings— “How happy could I be with either, Were t’other dear charmer away.” According to the jury, if Jones had not married Mary Brown, Jenkins would—consequently hers is a double loss. So that if a woman reaches the ripe age of thirty, by this arithmetic she is more wronged than she would have been had she been a blooming lass of twenty. In the same manner there is a delicate sliding-scale for defendants in such cases. A bridegroom well-made and well-to-do has to pay no end of sovereigns for the damage he has done; while a short time since, a defendant who had been attacked with paralysis was let off for £50. Woman, in this view of the case, is as dangerous as a money-lender or a shark. Byron tells us— “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart— ’Tis woman’s whole existence.” But our modern juries give us a very different reading. We prefer, however, to abide by the old.