n the same
manner there is a delicate sliding-scale for defendants in such cases. A
bridegroom well-made and well-to-do has to pay no end of sovereigns for
the damage he has done; while a short time since, a defendant who had
been attacked with paralysis was let off for 50 pounds. Woman, in this
view of the case, is as dangerous as a money-lender or a shark. Byron
tells us--

"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart--
'Tis woman's whole existence."

But our modern juries give us a very different reading. We prefer,
however, to abide by the old.

Most undoubtedly to win the affections of a woman and then desert her is
a crime--but it is of a character too ethereal to be touched by human
law. If the woman's heart be shattered by the blow, no amount of
money-compensation can heal the wound, and a woman of much worth and of
the least delicacy would shrink from the publicity such cases generally
confer on all the parties interested in them. But if the principle be
admitted, that disappointment in love can be atoned for by the possession
of solid cash--if gold can heal the heart wounded by the fact that its
love has been repelled--that its confidence has been betrayed--we do not
see why the same remedy should not be within the reach of man. And yet
this notoriously is not the case. When anything of the sort is tried the
unhappy plaintiff seldom gets more than a farthing damages. Besides,
what upright, honourable man would stoop for a moment to such a thing;
and yet, in spite of all modern enlightment, we maintain that the injury
of a breach of promise on the part of a woman is as great as that on the
part of a man. In the morning of life men have been struck down by such
disappointments, and through life have been blasted as the oak by the
lightning's stroke. With his heart gone--demoralised, the man has lived
to take a fearful revenge for the first offence, possibly to become a
cold cynic--sceptical of man's honour and woman's love. Yet breach of
promise cases are not resorted to by men, and we cannot congratulate our
fair friends on the fact that so many of them come into courts of law as
plaintiffs in such cases. Bachelors will fear that, after all, it is
true that--

"Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair."

And the result will be that while the more impetuous of us will commit
ourselves at once, and come within the clutches