There _are_ men, however, who, owing to some constitutional defect or inherited anomaly, remain unaffected by these and similar arts. Should any woman be so foolish as to crave such a man’s Love, she will do well to bear in mind that _Vanity is the backdoor by which every man’s heart may be entered_. Thus Byron says of a Venetian flame of his: “But her great merit is finding out mine—there is nothing so amiable as discernment.” “Let her be,” says Thackeray, “if not a clever woman, an appreciator of cleverness in others, which, perhaps, clever folks like better.” “Ne’er,” says Scott, “‘Was flattery lost on poet’s ears: A simple race! they waste their toil For the vain tribute of a smile.’” Rousseau’s last love was inspired by a woman’s admiration of his writings. Balzac, celibate for many years, was at last captured by a woman who returned to a hotel room for a volume of his works she had left there, informing him, without suspecting who he was, that she never travelled without it and could not live without it. “The story of the marriage of Lamartine,” says the author of _Salad for the Solitary_, “is also one of romantic interest. The lady, whose maiden name was Birch, was possessed of considerable property, and when past the bloom of youth she became passionately enamoured of the poet from the perusal of his _Meditations_. For some time she nursed this sentiment in secret, and, being apprised of the embarrassed state of his affairs, she wrote him, tendering him the bulk of her fortune. Touched with this remarkable proof of her generosity, and supposing it could only be caused by a preference for himself, he at once made an offer of his hand and heart. He judged rightly, and the poet was promptly accepted.” Sympathy, beauty, wit, elegant manners, amiability—these are woman’s arrows of Love, ever sure of their aim. “She loved me for the dangers I had passed,” says Othello, “and I loved her that she did pity them.” Or, as Professor Dowden comments on this passage, “the beautiful Italian girl is fascinated by the regal strength and grandeur, and tender protectiveness of the Moor. _He_ is charmed by the sweetness, the sympathy, the gentle disposition the gracious womanliness of Desdemona.” “The _gracious womanliness_ of Desdemona.” There lies the secret—the charm of charms. It is fortunate that the political viragoes of to-day, who would remove woman from her domestic sphere, have opposed to them the greatest force in the universe—_the power of man’s Love!_ When they have overcome that, they will find it easy to dam the current of the Niagara River, and curb the force of the ocean’s countless breakers. PROPOSING