No one suffers from greater _ennui_ and anxiety than a fat, weighty, slouching, bass-voiced man of business, who, like the Roman elephants of former times, is called upon to dance upon the slender rope of love, and whose amorous pantomimes always remind me of dormice, that seem to be at a loss about their every movement when sudden warmth interrupts their dormant state. Only with widows, who care less to be loved than to be married, can a heavy man of business begin his romance where the novelists end theirs--viz., at the steps of the altar. Such a man, constructed on the crudest style, would have a load off his mind if he could get some one to love his shepherdess in his name until there was nothing more to be done but to have the wedding; the taking upon myself of such crosses and burdens for another is just what I should feel a calling for. I have often thought of advertising it in public papers (had I not feared it might be taken for a joke), that I offer myself to serve as plenipotentiary to any man of business who has no time to properly make love to a girl. Provided only she be tolerable, I should be willing to swear platonic everlasting affection, make the necessary declarations of love, and, in short, substitute myself in the most disinterested manner, or escort her arm-in-arm through the ups and downs of the land of love, until on the border I could make her over to the prospective bridegroom in proper condition to be married. Instead of marriage by proxy we should thus have love by proxy. _Jean Paul Friedrich Richter._ _A TENDER-HEARTED CRITIC._ HE composed reviews as others do prayers--only when in straits; it was like the carrying of water of the Athenian so that he might thus be free to devote himself to his favourite studies without hunger. But his satirical sting he would put in the sheath when writing reviews. “Petty authors,” he said, “are always bitter, and great ones are worse than their works. Why should I be less severe upon the genius for his moral faults, such as vanity, than upon the dunce? On the contrary. Poverty and ugliness not self-incurred deserve no disdain; but neither do they deserve it _when_ self-incurred, though Cicero be against me. For neither a moral fault nor its punishment can be increased by a physical consequence which may follow or may not follow. Is the spendthrift who is impoverished in consequence of his way of living more to be blamed than the spendthrift who goes free? On the contrary.” Applying this to poor writers whose unconquerable self-conceit hides their worthlessness to themselves, upon whose innocent hearts the critic vents his just wrath over their guilty heads, it is certainly permissible to scoff bitterly at the type, but the individual should be more gently dealt with. Methinks it would be the gold-test of a morally immaculate scholar if he were called upon to review a poor but celebrated book. _Jean Paul Friedrich Richter._