Sweethearting is a very different thing: we come now to love-making taken _au sérieux_. Sweethearts are two young people who have confessed their love to each other and have become mutually affianced, with or without the consent of their parents. This English word has an old-fashioned flavour about it. It corresponds very much to our _bon ami_ and _bonne amie_. In speaking of the intended husband of a lady of good society, you would now rather use the word _lover_. Sweethearting could hardly exist in France, where the most firmly betrothed lovers scarcely ever have a chance of renewing their vows of love, except in the presence of a future mother-in-law. In England, sweethearting means to make love openly; to take one's choice about, to friends' houses, to concerts, to the theatre, to parties, for sentimental walks more or less solitary; to be allowed a thousand charming little liberties; it means, in a word, to play the comedy of love. Of course, accidents will happen, it is inevitable: carried away by the success of the play, the best actors may forget themselves. But it is far from being the rule: it is even a very rare exception, especially in the educated classes. It is a curious spectacle, in a country where reserve, prudery, and propriety are carried to a point of uncomfortableness, to observe the couples of lovers walking about in the evening, holding each other by the hand, by the waist, around the neck, and, in rather deserted streets, forming regular processions. I am not speaking of the better classes, of course; but still I speak of the lower middle class--of clerks, shopmen, and shopgirls, very well dressed, and for the most part very respectable. These couples go "sober, sober," like the "poor man" in the nursery rhyme, and, with their eyes bent languishingly on each other, appear to find very little to say with their lips. When you pass and look at them, they seem to say to you: "You have been through it yourself, old fellow, haven't you? You know all about it: there's no need to mind you." The seats in the parks and public promenades are occupied all the evening long by such couples. These seats are made to hold three persons, but, with a little management, they will accommodate six. The occupants are there by the hour together, each couple taking no notice of the others, but clasped in a silent embrace, motionless and rapturous. I have always admired these stoical young Englishmen who can thus undergo, for hours, this voluptuous treatment without any inconvenience. One evening, in the month of March of last year, I crossed Hyde Park to get to the Marble Arch from Piccadilly. As I saw those couples reposing at their ease on the grass, and not attempting to disturb themselves for such a trifle as a man passing, I thought to myself, "O free England! to what lengths, after all, will thy love of liberty carry thee!"