I hope that the fate of my Clemence may be
happier than her mother's, so far as the state of society in France
will allow of it: I will give her a choice, and, at any rate, a power
of refusing even what appears to me to be a suitable marriage; for no
doubt it is better for an intelligent and responsible human being to
choose its own destiny, and to run its own risks. I fancy that the
mistake in your English society is, that your girls have apparently the
freedom of choice without being trained to make good use of it. If your
sister Mary was as inexperienced and as ignorant as I was at the time
when my parents gave me to M. de Vericourt, she could not distinguish
between the selfish fortune-hunter and the true lover; the conventional
manners were all the same, and she chose for herself a life of misery.
Your interference only roused the spirit of opposition, and without
preventing the marriage, made your brother-in-law regard you with more
dislike and suspicion. Ah! my friend, when I see a young girl about to
be married, my heart is full of anxieties for her--I know the risk she
runs. But I did not feel them much for myself. I grew into the
knowledge of my unhappiness as I grew in knowledge of what might have
been; but the recluse life of a French girl prevents her from expecting
much from marriage but an increase of consequence. With us it is a step
from tutelage to liberty--from nonentity to importance. It cannot be
quite so much so in England; but, from the greater prevalence of
celibacy, it has even more ECLAT and prestige than here, where marriage
is the rule. The TROUSSEAU, the presents, the congratulations, the
going into society under the interesting circumstances of an
engagement, must divert a girl's attention from the really serious
nature of the connection she is forming.

"You will have pleasure in educating your little girls. Make them
strong in body and independent in mind if you can. They are likely to
be handsome, intelligent, and, if you continue to be prejudiced against
poor Francis, rich. Give them more knowledge and more firmness than
their poor mother had. I have no doubt that they will grow up good, for
you will be kind to them. Girls all turn out well if you give them good
training in a happy home; but as for happiness, that depends so much on
their choice in marriage, that all you have done for them may be thrown
away, if you do not educate them to be something more than amiable and
pleasing comp