each must stand comparison, in aftertime, with other birds, tame and wild, whose plumage glistens with every gorgeous variety of colour, whose notes sink and swell through all the scales of harmony. Then it is the old story over and over again. Madame Ste. Colombe does not care so much for modest merit, and considers meekness rather a tame and insipid virtue, since the keen black eyes of haughty, handsome Count Aquila told her a flattering tale; sober drab and fawn no longer seem a becoming apparel since Prince Percinet (the Duchess's favourite lory) dazzled her with his Court suit of crimson and gold. Her innocent consort never dreams, of course, of repining; but he confesses to an intimate friend that cooing _does_ sometimes sound rather monotonous: he heard a few days ago, for the first time, Lady Philomelle sing. Surely it were better to endure loneliness a little longer--ay, even till "black turns grey"--than to discover that we are unworthily or unsuitably matched, when to change our mate would be a double sin. There are matrimonial mistakes enough, Heaven knows, made as it is; but, if every one were to marry their first love, a decade of Judges more untiring than Sir Cresswell would be insufficient to settle the differences of aspirants to dis-union. This is the "wrong side of the stuff," of course; it would be easy to quote thousands of opposite instances--of the Anderson type--where no shadow of discontent has clouded a long life of happiness. Still, the danger remains: you can no more ignore it than you can any other disagreeable fact, or public nuisance; but it will probably be lessened if one or both of the contracting parties have had practical experience enough to enable them to know their own minds once for all. The wise old Stagyrite, after discussing different sorts of courage, places high that of [Greek: Empeiria]: shall we not, too, honour and value most the Love which has been matured and educated by a course of preliminary and lighter experiments? If we have wandered far, through many gardens--finding in each flowers fragrant and beautiful, but never a one worthy to be placed in our breast--do we love her less, when we choose her at last--our own Provence Rose? Was it not well that we should review and admire other fair pictures wrought by the Great Artist, before we bought what we hold to be His masterpiece, at the price of all our life's treasure? Had we not acquired some cunning of the lapidary, by studying the properties of less precious gems, could we value your pure perfections aright, O Margarita, pearl of pearls? (In spite of that last sentimental sentence, which, I swear, was elaborated solely as a peace-offering to Them, I feel a comfortable conviction of having left the prejudices of every feminine reader in precisely the same state as I found them when we broached the subject.)