e such a condition as "SINGLE BLESSEDNESS"--though
he aptly enough engrafts it on a thorn! For my part, I cannot enough
admire the theory of certain modern poets, that an angel is an ethereal
being, composed by the interunion in heaven, of two mortals who have been
faithfully attached on earth--and as to "blessedness" being ever "single,"
either in this world or the next, I do not believe a word about the matter!
"Happiness," Lord Byron assures us, "was born a twin!"

I do not mean to complain of my condition--far from it. But I wish to say,
that since, from the small care taken by English parents to double the
condition of their daughters, it is clear the state of "single blessedness"
is of higher account in our own "favoured country" than in any other in
Europe; it certainly behoves the guardians of the public weal to afford
due protection and encouragement to spinsters.

Every body knows that Great Britain is the very fatherland of old maids.
In Catholic countries, the superfluous daughters of a family are disposed
of in convents and _beguinages_, just as in Turkey and China they are,
still more humanely, drowned. In certain provinces of the east, pigs are
expressly kept, to be turned into the streets at daybreak, for the purpose
of devouring the female infants exposed during the night--thus
benevolently securing them from the after torments of single "blessedness."

But a far nobler arrangement was made by that greatest of modern
legislators, Napoleon--whose code entitles the daughters of a house to
share, equally with sons, in its property and bequeathments; and in France,
a woman with a dowery is as sure of courtship and marriage, as of death
and burial. Nay, so much is marriage regarded among the French as the
indispensable condition of the human species, that parents proceed as
openly to the task of procuring a proper husband for their daughter, as of
providing her with shoes and stockings. No false delicacy--no pitiful
manoeuvres! The affair is treated like any other negotiation. It is a mere
question of two and two making four, which enables two to make one. How
far more honest than the angling and trickery of English
match-making--which, by keeping men constantly on the defensive,
predisposes them against attractions to which they might otherwise give
way! However, as I said before, I do not wish to complain of my condition.

I only consider it hard that the interests of the wives of England are to
be exclu