We have had opportunities to see society in these various countries, and have failed to perceive that the morality of either sex is at all superior to what it is with us, while the effect of cloister-like education on young women is to weaken their self-reliance, and often prepare them for greater extravagances when marriage gives them liberty. With us, the young woman is free until her wedding day. After that epoch, she looks forward to withdrawing more or less from society, and confining her thoughts to family matters. In France, Spain, or Italy, in the wealthier classes, precisely the contrary is the rule. Marriage brings deliverance from an irksome espionage and numberless fetters; it is the avenue to a life in public and independent action. How injurious to domestic happiness this is, can readily be imagined. It is true that the liberty of American girls occasionally leads to improprieties. But, except in certain great cities, such instances are rare. The safeguards of virtue are knowledge and self-command, not duennas and _jalousies_. Let mothers properly instruct their daughters, and they need have no apprehension about their conduct. The period of courtship is one full of importance. A young woman of unripe experience must decide from what she can see of a man during the intercourse of a few months, whether he will suit her for a life-companion. She has no knowledge of human nature; and what would it avail her if she had, when at such a time a suitor is careful only to show his eligible traits? 'Go a-courting,' said old Dr Franklin, in his homely language, 'in your everyday clothes.' Not one man out of a thousand is honest enough to take his advice. It is useless for her to ask aid of another. She must judge for herself. What, then, is she to do? There is a mysterious instinct in a pure-minded woman which is beyond all analysis,--a tact which men do not possess, and do not readily believe in. At such a crisis this instinct saves her. She feels in a moment the presence of a base, unworthy nature. An unconscious repulsion is manifest in her eye, her voice. Where a suitor is not a man of low motive, but merely quite incongruous in temper and disposition, this same instinct acts, and the man, without being able to say just why, feels that he is laboring in vain. If he blindly insists in his wooing, he has no one to chide but himself when he is finally discarded. But if the man is worthy, and suitable, does this blessed instinct whisper the happy news with like promptness to the maiden's soul? Ah! that raises another issue. It brings us face to face with that difficult question of LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.