Ah! if the wife is ever to become an instrument of love, there is no sign of it here! Her father occupies himself with calculations of the frankest and most practical kind; he has lived long enough to understand the importance of questions of money or worldly interests, and on this score is usually more than a match for his son-in-law. It is all very well for the preachers to extol virtue naked and unadorned! The ideal of a self-respecting father is an eligible elder son, heir to the paternal dovecot, a man of leisure, or at any rate a “gentleman,” in other words, well-connected, moving in good society, with fine friends. Trade he rather looks down on: he has seen so many failures!—so many substantial traders have taken to setting up as “merchant gentlemen,” like the Genoese, and have come to grief! The law, on the other hand, is extremely popular; in these days there is nothing better than an alliance with a lawyer. The young man who is waiting for the death of his father to buy an appointment in the judicature may hold up his head in any company. Having once come to a decision, the father is at no loss for excellent reasons both for himself and others. “He plays the guitar well, is a beautiful dancer, a delightful singer, an excellent writer, a good-looking decent fellow! He has the promise of a post as Lord High Whipper-snapper to the King: ’tis a fine thing, a place at Court! given opportunity and a friend, and your fortune is made.”... “He is a sensible fellow, keeps a still tongue in his head, answers you only with nods or Italianate shrugs.”... “Oh! it’s all the same to me. I am a gentleman myself; here’s to all gentlemen! Zounds! but ’tis expensive, worse luck! Come now, I’m as good a gentleman as the king. I don’t keep up his style, to be sure, but, mark you, I hunt when I like, come and go as I please, bustle about, flog and bawl at and curse my people, let ’em know I am master; and the hundred or two serfs I have under me daren’t stir, egad, without my leave.”... “Tut tut! a little less gilt and a little more gingerbread! My girl marry a lord and then forsooth go footing it in the mud to canvass Jacks-in-office for a flower-girl’s corner or some twopenny-ha’penny matter! A fig for your gentlemen!”... and so on, with endless variations on the same theme of utilitarianism pure and simple. Perhaps the girl is already smitten with a handsome officer: no matter, she will have to marry some surveyor from Paris, especially if he holds a good appointment on the crown lands, because that provides opportunities of feathering one’s nest. In such matters the fathers relentlessly enforce their authority, apparently with every right. The pleadings in a criminal case reveal to us the Biblical Machiavelism of a well-to-do peasant who had conceived the idea of getting gratuitous service for ten years from the candidate for his daughter’s hand and fortune: the period expires, and then the father with