ich is varying every hour;
While, in chaste hearts, uninfluenced by the power
Of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower
That breathes on earth the air of paradise."

Not a few marry from Fancy alone. They are attracted toward a gentleman
by his manners and external appearance. They conceive a liking for
another, because he has a pleasant voice, or an engaging smile, or is
full of gaiety and wit. The influence of these qualities is felt by us
all; nor is it wrong to give them some weight, in forming our estimate
of one as a companion. But what are they all, if disconnected from a
praiseworthy character? She who gives her heart, for this poor price,
will sometime awake to a sense of her delusion. The imagination has an
influence, perhaps an unavoidable one, on the affections. We invest a
favorite with ideal charms, and put out of sight his faults. But in
contemplating the solemn relation of marriage, no lady should abandon
the exercise of her reason. Love, it is said, often so excites the fancy
as to call forth effusions of poetry, where they were hitherto unknown.
But woe to her, who cheats herself with the belief that the creature of
her imagination is a real being, who will not listen to the counsels of
understanding, but rushes blindly down the precipice, which, with one
open eye, she might easily have foreseen.

A recent writer, in giving advice to young ladies, speaks of "novels and
tales," and especially of the "best fictions of our day, as holding up
to view the mistakes and faults, which young persons are most likely to
commit on the subject of love and matrimony, in such a way as is likely
to prevent their repetition." With deference to one so intelligent in
her remarks on other topics, I must differ from her on this. I believe
that the reading of novels almost uniformly operates unfavorably on the
female heart. In the first place, fictitious writings are very seldom
read, except for the sake of the story. Let the author append a moral to
his book, who thinks of stopping to read that? But again, where is the
novel, which is an exact transcript of real life? There may be no one
character in a work, that is not somewhat natural. Yet are the relations
of each to all the others such as those in which we daily see people
placed? Are not the remarks of the speakers often forced and strained?
Do such loves occur in this working-day world? Are not the incidents,
and the plot in general, indebted la