Before any steps are taken, the income or pecuniary means of the parties about to commence housekeeping, should be well considered. We know that by young “brides elect,” and rash youths bent on matrimony, such £ s. d. matters will be deemed dreadfully sublunary; they have a notion that if once they are married, all will be sure to go right. A young clerk, rejoicing in an income of £80 or £100 per annum, more or less, every penny of which he has been in the habit of seeing annually swallowed up by his own expenses, falls in love with the daughter of a well-to-do tradesman, a surgeon, or a lawyer in tolerable practice. The young lady can sing and play, speak French, Italian, and German a little, produce marvels in the way of crochet and ornamental work, loves poetry and romance, and can trim herself a smart bonnet, which, however, often costs more than if she had purchased one ready made. But she has been at boarding-school, and knows little or nothing of life as it is; her wants have been provided for, there have been servants to wait upon, and parents to love and cherish her; and now, to crown all, she has a lover to adore her, to write “sonnets to her eyebrow,” sing a second to her duets, and flatter her caprices and pretty whims. If the father is a shrewd, worldly man, he soon nips this promising bit of flirtation in the bud; but if he is an easy-going sort of person, or one with a family of daughters who will, he knows, at his death, be but poorly provided for, he lets matters take their course. The young man proposes, feeling certain in his own mind that a wife will be an actual saving to him—single men are so imposed upon! The heads of the families meet in grave consultation on the subject of “ways and means,” and not seeing their way clearly, separate without coming to any resolution. The young people are importunate; they urge all sorts of hopeful, inexperienced arguments, and become eloquent under the enthusiasm of love. He wilfully ignores the fact that he has been accustomed to spend half his income on clothes and amusements, and that a merely nominal sum had been paid to his parents for board and lodging, and all the comforts of a good home, and the rest frittered away he scarcely knows how. She forgets how much she spends on gloves, ribbons, perfumes, and other finery, not to mention actual necessaries, and persists in seeing an _el dorado_ in the income of her lover. They overcome all obstacles and are married, and with _éclat_, or it would not be _comme il faut_. As much is spent on the bridal dress and the hired coaches, and the breakfast, as would keep the newly-married pair comfortably for a month; then off they go into the country to spend in travelling, hotel-bills, &c., some £20 or £30, and fulfil all the requirements of the etiquette of this enlightened age, which often imperiously demands reckless expenditure when common sense would advise more than usual economy.