Are there many heroes and heroines for whom we dare predict a happy married life? Would Mr. B. and Pamela have written such long letters to each other about the training of their children if conversation had not been a bore? Evelina must have been disappointed to discover that Lord Orville lived on roast beef, plum-pudding, and port wine instead of music and poetry. Of all Scott's heroes and heroines none had sacrificed more for each other than Ivanhoe and Rowena; he gave up Rotherwood, and, as a disinherited son, sought forgetfulness of her charms in distant Palestine; she put aside all hopes of becoming a Saxon queen, and was true to the gallant son of Cedric. Yet we have Thackeray for authority that they were not only unhappy, but often quarrelled after Scott left them at the altar. And none of Thackeray's marriages turned out well, although Becky Sharp made Rodney Crawley very happy until he discovered her wiles. Dickens was perhaps more fortunate, but David was led away by the cunning ways of Dora before he discovered a companion and helpmate in Agnes, a heroine worthy to be placed beside Elizabeth and Jane Bennet. George Eliot's books and those of later novelists are rather a warning than an incentive to matrimony. Have all our sighs and tears over the mishaps of ill-starred lovers been in vain, and is it true that when the curtain falls at the wedding it is only to shut from view a scene of domestic infelicity? Not so with Jane Austen. She is the queen of match-makers. The marriages brought about by her guidance give a belief in the permanency of English home life, quite as necessary for the welfare of the kingdom as the stability of Magna Charta. Her heroes have qualities that wear well, and her heroines might have inspired Wordsworth's lines: A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.