The cases are frequent, in which a girl is encouraged to receive the addresses of one, who is deficient in almost every quality requisite in a good husband, merely because he is "a great man." A writer observes that "love is our first toy, our second, display." But here this is completely reversed. Display is the first toy; as for love, that is an inferior consideration. You shall see a young woman led to barter herself to a man who is ignorant, proud, selfish, and unkind. "Let the person," says one, "be blind, lame, deformed, diseased, severe, morose, vicious, old, or good for nothing, if the parents can but a little advance their daughter above the quality or condition themselves have lived in, the poor child must be made a living sacrifice, and probably know no more happy days after the solemnization of her nuptials." We are told that in Naples, it is not uncommon for a nobleman of decayed fortune, to send his daughters to a nunnery, because his means will not enable him to educate them for marriage in the highest circles of society. The recent tragedy enacted in the city of Philadelphia, was a mournful illustration of the dangers of parental ambition. A father had toiled for years, to amass wealth for the purpose of introducing his daughter to society in England, and elevating her to a high station in that land. She married contrary to his wishes, and in his fiend-like disappointment, wrought up to insanity, he actually murdered the victim of his rage, his own child. Why will parents thus attempt to coerce the chainless affections? Why should so many females consent to marry the objects of their aversion, nay, sometimes, of their disgust, for the sake of a name? Woman has been known to marry from the love of Conquest, and the desire to rule. The female heart is susceptible of the love of power, and one may seek, or consent to join herself to, a husband, for the sake of having a subject, over whom continually to reign. We are told that Madam Gamarra, the wife of the President of Peru, is a "female Bonaparte, and though her husband is nominally the head of the republic, she is the real sovereign." How many smaller empires exhibit the same unnatural picture. It is in vain to say that the wife is the more capable of the two. This by no means exonerates her from blame, who deliberately entered the marriage state with so little respect for her companion, as to cherish a determined purpose of lording it over him, as her inferior.