Young men are often warned not to marry for beauty, because it is but skin-deep. But surely a millimetre of beauty is worth more than a yard of ugliness, though whitewashed with rank, money, or general utility. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” OLD MAIDS One way in which Romantic Love fulfils its mission of increasing the amount of Personal Beauty in the world, is by _eliminating ugly and masculine women as Old Maids_, and thus preventing them from transmitting their characteristics to the next generation. Were it not for the fact that the average man is quite devoid of æsthetic taste and incapable of ardent Romantic Love, and that therefore considerations of wealth and social advantages guide him in his choice of a wife, _ugly_ women would rarely be found outside the ranks of Old Maids. As it is, it happens only too often that dowerless beautiful women are condemned to live and die in single blessedness, while the ugly people fill the world with photographic copies of themselves. Why is it that every refined man feels an instinctive aversion to _masculine_ women? Because a masculine woman is an exception to the laws of nature, a _lusus naturæ_, a monstrosity. We find even among the lower animals that the females differ widely, as a rule, in traits and appearance from the males—sometimes so much so that there are instances on record of females and males having been for a time supposed to belong to different species; and the differences grow greater the more the sexual functions are developed and specialised. Yet Amazons occur even among animals. “Characters common to the male,” says Darwin, “are occasionally developed in the female _when she grows old or becomes diseased_, as, for instance, when the common hen assumes the flowing tail-feathers, hackles, combs, spurs, voice, and even _pugnacity_ of the cock.” Among the warlike Greeks, who knew only masculine or mono-sexual love, Amazons were naturally esteemed, as they did not clash with their feminine ideal. “How popular a subject the Amazons were for sculptors,” says Grote, “we learn from the statement of Pliny that the most distinguished sculptors executed Amazons, and that this subject was the only one upon which a direct comparison could be made between them.” But the progress of time, as we have seen, has more and more differentiated men and women, in appearance and traits of character; and the modern ideal of woman is exclusively feminine, _i.e._ devoid of hackles, spurs, cock-a-doodle-doo, and pugnacity. Hence the political Virago movement is an evil which will never make any progress, thanks to the constant elimination of masculine women through that adorable process of Sexual Selection known as Modern Love.