With all the inclination in the world to believe that France abounds with loving, constant, faithful wives, and husbands too, I cannot but think that if they are so, it is in spite of the manner in which their marriages are made, and not in consequence of it. The strongest argument in favour of their manner of proceeding undoubtedly is, that a husband who receives a young wife as totally without impressions of any kind, (as a well-brought-up French girl certainly is,) has a better chance--or rather, has more _power_ of making her heart entirely his own, than any man can have that falls in love with a beauty of twenty, who may already have heard as tender sighs as he can utter breathed in her ear by some one who may have had no power to marry her, but who might have had a heart to love her, and a tongue to win her as well as himself. But against this how much is to be placed! However dearly a Frenchwoman may love her husband, he can never feel that it is a love which has selected him; and though it may sometimes happen that a pretty creature is applied for because of her prettiness, yet if the application be made and answered, and no question asked as to her will or wish in the affair, she can feel but little gratification even to her vanity--and certainly nothing whatever approaching to a feeling of tenderness at her heart. The force of habit is ever so inveterate, that it is not likely either nation can be really a fair and impartial judge of the other in a matter so entirely regulated by it. Therefore, all that I, as English, will venture to say farther on the subject is, that I should be sorry on this point to see us adopt the fashion of our neighbour France. I have reason to believe, however, that my friend of the Luxembourg Gardens exaggerated a good deal in his statement respecting the non-existence of single women in France. They do exist here, though certainly in less numbers than in England,--but it is not so easy to find them out. With us it is not unusual for single ladies to take what is called _brevet rank_;--that is, Miss Dorothy Tomkins becomes Mrs. Dorothy Tomkins--and sometimes _tout bonnement_ Mrs. Tomkins, provided there be no collateral Mrs. Tomkins to interfere with her: but upon no occasion do I remember that any lady in this predicament called herself the widow Tomkins, or the widow anything else. Here, however, I am assured that the case is different; and that, let the number of spinsters be great or small, no one but the near connexions and most intimate friends of the party know anything of the matter. Many a _veuve respectable_ has never had a husband in her life; and I have heard it positively affirmed, that the secret is often so well kept, that the nieces and nephews of a family do not know their maiden aunts from their widowed ones.