r full intensity. Hence, the much smaller proportion of them who
grow up well-made and healthy. In the pale, angular, flat-chested young
ladies, so abundant in London drawing-rooms, we see the effect of
merciless application, unrelieved by youthful sports; and this physical
degeneracy hinders their welfare far more than their many
accomplishments aid it. Mammas anxious to make their daughters
attractive, could scarcely choose a course more fatal than this, which
sacrifices the body to the mind. Either they disregard the tastes of the
opposite sex, or else their conception of those tastes is erroneous. Men
care little for erudition in women; but very much for physical beauty,
good nature, and sound sense. How many conquests does the blue-stocking
make through her extensive knowledge of history? What man ever fell in
love with a woman because she understood Italian? Where is the Edwin who
was brought to Angelina's feet by her German? But rosy cheeks and
laughing eyes are great attractions. A finely rounded figure draws
admiring glances. The liveliness and good humour that overflowing health
produces, go a great way towards establishing attachments. Every one
knows cases where bodily perfections, in the absence of all other
recommendations, have incited a passion that carried all before it; but
scarcely any one can point to a case where intellectual acquirements,
apart from moral or physical attributes, have aroused such a feeling.
The truth is that, out of the many elements uniting in various
proportions to produce in a man's breast the complex emotion we call
love, the strongest are those produced by physical attractions; the next
in order of strength are those produced by moral attractions; the
weakest are those produced by intellectual attractions; and even these
are dependent less on acquired knowledge than on natural
faculty--quickness, wit, insight. If any think the assertion a
derogatory one, and inveigh against the masculine character for being
thus swayed; we reply that they little know what they say when they thus
call in question the Divine ordinations. Even were there no obvious
meaning in the arrangement, we might be sure that some important end was
subserved. But the meaning is quite obvious to those who examine. When
we remember that one of Nature's ends, or rather her supreme end, is the
welfare of posterity; further that, in so far as posterity are
concerned, a cultivated intelligence based on a bad _physiq