We often see in country places matrons of over forty who are still like young women, both in looks and bearing, both in mental innocence and physical power. They have the shy and innocent look of girls; they blush like girls; they know less evil than almost any town-bred girl of eighteen, mothers of stalwart youths though they may be; they can walk and laugh and take pleasure in their lives like girls; and their daughters find them as much sisters as mothers. It is not quite the same thing if they do not marry; for among the saddest sights of social life is that terrible fading and withering away of comely, healthy, vigorous young country girls, who slowly pass from nymphs, full of grace and beauty, of happiness and power, to antiquated virgins, soured, useless, debilitated and out of nature. Of these, too, there are plenty in country places; but perhaps some scheme will be some day set afoot which shall redress the overweighted balance and bring to the service of the future some of the healthiest and best of our women. Meanwhile the fresh, innocent, breezy nymph is a charming study; and may the time be far distant which shall see her tamed and civilized out of existence altogether! _MÉSALLIANCES._ The French system of parents arranging the marriage of their children without the consent of the girl being even asked, but assumed as granted, is not so wholly monstrous as many people in England believe. It seems to be founded on the idea that, given a young girl who has been kept shut up from all possibility of forming the most shadowy attachment for any man whatsoever, and present to her as her husband a sufficiently well-endowed and nice-looking man, with whom come liberty, pretty dresses, balls, admiration and social standing, and the chances are she will love him and live with him in tolerable harmony to the end of the chapter. And this idea is by no means wholly beside the truth, as we find it in practice. The parents, who are better judges of character and circumstance than the daughter can possibly be, are supposed to take care that their future son-in-law is up to their standard, whatever that may be, and that the connexion is not of a kind to bring discredit on their house; and on this and the joint income, as the solid bases, they build the not very unreasonable hypothesis that one man is as good as another for the satisfaction of a quite untouched and virginal fancy, and that suitable external conditions go further and last longer than passion. They trust to the force of instinct to make all square with the affections, while they themselves arrange for the smooth running of the social circumstances; and they are not far out in their calculations.