ir beauty remain
unmarried at the last, but the reason that their beauty gives them no
advantage is certainly not one. The first reason perhaps is that
beauties are inclined to be fastidious and capricious. They have no
notion of following the advice of Mrs. Hannah More, and being contented
with the first good, sensible, Christian lover who falls in their way;
and they run, in consequence, no slight risk of overstaying their
market. They go in for a more splendid sort of matrimonial success, and
think they can afford to play the more daring game.

Plain girls are providentially preserved from these temptations. At the
close of a well-spent life they can conscientiously look back on a
career in which no reasonable opportunity was neglected, and say that
they have not broken many hearts, or been sinfully and distractingly
particular. And there is the further consideration to be remembered in
the case of plain girls, that fortune and rank are nearly as valuable
articles as beauty, and lead to a fair number of matrimonial alliances.
The system of Providence is full of kindly compensations, and it is a
proof of the universal benevolence we see about us that so many
heiresses should be plain. Plain girls have a right to be cheered and
comforted by the thought. It teaches them the happy lesson that beauty,
as compared with a settled income, is skin-deep and valueless; and that
what man looks for in the companion of his life is not so much a bright
cheek or a blue eye, as a substantial and useful amount of this world's
wealth.

Plain girls again expect less, and are prepared to accept less, in a
lover. Everybody knows the sort of useful, admirable, practical man who
sets himself to marry a plain girl. He is not a man of great rank, great
promise, or great expectations. Had it been otherwise, he might possibly
have flown at higher game, and set his heart on marrying female
loveliness rather than homely excellence. His choice, if it is nothing
else, is an index of a contented and modest disposition. He is not vain
enough to compete in the great race for beauties. What he looks for is
some one who will be the mother of his children, who will order his
servants duly, and keep his household bills; and whose good sense will
teach her to recognise the sterling qualities of her husband, and not
object to his dining daily in his slippers. This is the sort of partner
that plain girls may rationally hope to secure, and who can say that