`Well, I shall be neither careless nor weak.'

`Remember Peter, Helen! Don't boast, but watch. Keep a guard over your eyes and ears as the inlets of your heart, and over your lips as the outlet, lest they betray you in a moment of unwariness. Receive, coldly and dispassionately, every attention, till you have ascertained and duly considered the worth of the aspirant; and let your affections be consequent upon approbation alone. First study; then approve; then love. let your eyes be blind to all external attractions, your ears deaf to all the fascinations of Battery and light discourse.--These are nothing--and worse than nothing--snares and wiles of the tempter, to lure the thoughtless to their own destruction. Principle is the first thing, after all; and next to that, good sense, respectability, and moderate wealth. If you should marry the handsomest, and most accomplished and superficially agreeable man in the world, you little know the misery that would overwhelm you, if, after all, you should find him to be a worthless reprobate, or even an impracticable fool.'

`But what are all the poor fools and reprobates to do, aunt? If everybody followed your advice the world would soon come to an end.'

`Never fear, my dear! the male fools and reprobates will never want for partners while there are so many of the other sex to match them; but do you follow my advice. And this is no subject for jesting, Helen; I am sorry to see you treat the matter in that light way. Believe me, matrimony is a serious thing.' And she spoke it so seriously that one might have fancied she had known it to her cost; but I asked no more impertinent questions, and merely answered,--

`I know it is; and I know there is truth and sense in what you say; but you need not fear me, for I not only should think it wrong to marry a man that was deficient in sense or in principle, but I should never be tempted to do it; for I could not like him, if he were ever so handsome and ever so charming in other respects; I should hate him--despise him--pity him--anything but love him. My affections not only ought to be founded on approbation, but they will and must be so: for without approving I cannot love. It is needless to say I ought to be able to respect and honour the man I marry as well as love him, for I cannot love him without. So set your mind at rest.'

`I hope it may be so,' answered she.

`I know it is so,' persisted I.

`You have not been tried yet, Helen: we call but hope,' said she, in her cold, cautious way.

`I was vexed at her incredulity; but I am not sure her doubts were entirely without sagacity; I fear I have found it much easier to remember her advice than to profit by it--Indeed, I have sometimes been led to question the soundness of her doctrines on those subjects. Her counsels may be good, as far as they go--in the main points, at least;--but there are some things she has overlooked in her calculations. I wonder if she was ever in love.

I commenced my career--or my first campaign, as my uncle calls it--kindling with bright hopes and fancies-- chiefly raised by this conversation--and full of confidence in my own discretion. At first, I was delighted with the novelty and excitement of our London life; but soon, I began to weary of its mingled turbulence and constraint, and sigh for the freshness and freedom of home. My new acquaintances, both male and female, disappointed my expectations, and vexed and depressed me by turns; for I soon grew tired of studying their peculiarities, and laughing at their foibles--particularly as I was obliged to keep my criticisms to myself, for my aunt would not hear them--and they--the ladies especially--appeared so provokingly mindless, and heartless, and artificial. The gentlemen seemed better, but perhaps it was because I knew them less, perhaps because they flattered me; but I did not fall in love with any of them, and if their attentions pleased me one moment, they provoked me the next, because they put me out of humour with myself, by revealing my vanity and making me fear I was becoming like some of the ladies I so heartily despised.