find her without the comfort of a friend, forsaken and forgotten. She is of the kind to whom _sic transit_ more especially applies; and if her life's food has not been quite the husks, at all events it has not been good meat nor fine meal. _CHOOSING OR FINDING._ The controversy as to which is the better of the two methods of marrying one's daughter, in use in France and England respectively, has not yet been decided by any preponderating evidence. Whether the parents--especially the mother--ought to find a husband for the daughter, or whether the girl, young and inexperienced as she is, should seek one for herself, with the chance of not knowing her own mind in the first place, and of not understanding the real nature of the man she chooses in the second--these are the two principles contended for by the rival methods; and the fight is still going on. The truth is, the worst of either is so infinitely bad that there is nothing to choose between them; and the same is true, inversely, of the best. When things go well, the advocates of the particular system involved sing their pæans, and show how wise they were; when they go ill, the opponents howl their condemnation, and say: We told you so. The French method is based on the theory that a woman's knowledge of the world, and a mother's intimate acquaintance with her daughter's special temper and requirements, are likely to be truer guides in the choice of a husband than the callow fancy of a girl. It is assumed that the former will be better able than the latter to separate the reality from the appearance, to winnow the grain from the chaff. She will appraise at its true value a fascinating manner with a shaky moral character at its back; and a handsome face will go for little when the family lawyer confesses the poverty of the family purse. To the girl, a fluent tongue, flattering ways, a taking presence, would have included everything in heaven and earth that a man should be; and no dread of future poverty, no evidence of the bushels of wild oats sown broadcast, would have convinced her that Don Juan was a _mauvais parti_ and a scamp into the bargain. Again, the mother usually knows her daughters' dispositions better than the daughters themselves, and can distinguish between idiosyncrasies and needs as no young people are able to do. Laura is romantic, sentimental, imaginative; but Laura cannot mend a stocking nor make a shirt, nor do any kind of work requiring strength of grasp or deftness of touch. She has no power of endurance, no persistency of will, no executive ability; but she falls in love with a younger son just setting out to seek his fortunes in Australia; and, if allowed, she marries him, full of enthusiasm and delight, and goes out with him. In a year's time she is dead--literally killed by hardship; or, if she has vitality enough to survive the hard experience of roughing it in the bush, she collapses into a wretched, haggard, faded woman, prematurely old, hopeless and