s the most dangerous of all match-makers,
inasmuch as she is usually herself a warm-hearted pleasant woman, and
there is a courage and disinterestedness about her views very
captivating to young heads. There is no safety but in flight. Even a
bachelor of fair prudence and knowledge of the world is not safe in her
hands. We mean on the assumption that he is not in a position to marry.
If he is "an eligible," he cannot, of course, be considered safe
anywhere. But otherwise he knows that match-makers of the unromantic
worldly type will be only too glad to leave him alone.

And having, perhaps, been accustomed on this account to feel that he may
flirt in moderation with impunity, as a man with whom marriage is
altogether out of the question, he is quite unprepared for the new and
startling unconventional view which the romantic match-maker takes of
him. He is horrified to find that, ignoring the usual considerations as
to the length of his purse, she has discovered that he and the pretty
girl with whom he danced three consecutive dances last night must have
been made expressly for each other, and that she has somehow contrived,
by the exercise of that freemasonry in love-affairs which is peculiar to
women, to put the same ridiculous notion into the young lady's head. In
fact, he suddenly finds to his astonishment that he must either
propose--which is out of the question--or be considered a cold-blooded
trifler with female hearts. And so he has nothing to do but pack up his
portmanteau and beat an ignominious retreat, with an uncomfortable
consciousness that his amiable hostess and pretty partner have a very
poor opinion of him.

It is rather hard, however, that these and other abuses, which we have
not space to enumerate, of the great art of match-making should bring
the art itself into odium and contempt. In all of them there is a
violation of some one or more of what we take to be its three chief
canons. First, the objects to be experimented upon should be pecuniarily
in a position to marry. Secondly, care should be taken that they seem on
the whole not unlikely to suit each other. Thirdly, the artist should be
content, like a photographer, to bring the objects together, and leave
the rest of the work mainly to nature. We confess that we feel painfully
the unscientific vagueness of this last axiom, since so much turns upon
the way in which the objects are brought together. But, as we only
undertook to treat of the abuse