It is small wonder that chivalrous devotion should decrease when women lay so little claim to it.  Miss Edgeworth needed to decry sentimental and high-flown feelings,—­the Miss Edgeworth of to-day would need to uphold romance.

Women may still be “Queens of noble Nature’s crowning,” but they too often find that crown irksome, and prefer to be hail-fellow-well-met, taking and allowing liberties, which give small encouragement to men to be like Susan Winstanley’s lover.

Dante never watched the young man and maiden of to-day accosting each other, or he would not have said—­

    “If she salutes him, all his being o’er
    Flows humbleness.”

I am afraid Dante would now be left “sole sitting by the shores of old Romance,” unless indeed he went to some of the seniors, who are supposed to have no feelings left!  “If you want to marry a young heart, you must look for it in an old body.”

Are you, then, to reject all suggestions of a sensible marriage with any man who is not Prince Perfect?  I once read a very sensible little poem which described the heroine waiting year after year for Prince Perfect.  He came at last, but unfortunately “he sought perfection too,” so nothing came of it!  Cromwell’s rule in choosing his Ironsides is the safest in choosing a husband:  “Give me a man that hath principle—­I know where to have him.”  If he comes to you disguised as one of these somewhat commonplace Ironsides, and recommended by your mother, consider how very much the fairy Prince of your dreams would have to put up with in you, and you will probably find it heavenly, as well as worldly wisdom, to “go down on your knees and thank Heaven fasting for a good man’s love.”  You will tell me that many happy and useful lives are now open to women, and that they need not be dependent on marriage for happiness,—­and I shall quite agree with you; you may go on to say that marriage can now be to a woman a mere choice amongst many professions, a mere accident, as it is to a man,—­and there I shall totally disagree with you.  It is quite possible that Happiness may lie in the narrower, more self-willed work of the single woman, but Blessedness, which is higher and more enduring than happiness, can only be known to the married woman whose whole nature is developed, and fully known only to the “Queen of Marriage:  a most perfect wife.”

Are you, then, to spend your lives making nets, or, following Swift’s wise caution, even in making cages, waiting, like Lydia Languish, for a hero of romance, and beguiling the interval with reading “The Delicate Distress,” and “The Mistakes of the Heart”?  Not at all!  The best way to prepare for marriage is to prepare yourself to be like Bridget Elia, “an incomparable old maid.”