all know exactly what the lovely creatures are like physically, but it is not the mere physique we can love; you might as well say you love a picture or a statue. It is the mental disposition we love, and that we can never discover until we marry and begin to live together. A man may show the most amiable manners in public; he may be obliging, good-humoured, witty, and in every way agreeable in society; but look at him in the privacy of domestic life, he may there prove harsh, arrogant, exacting, in short everything that is detestable. Our people have no concealments to make with regard to their physical qualities; but all are deceivers, consciously or unconsciously, with regard to their moral constitution. This is a fact so generally recognised here, that no attempt is made to ascertain the moral adaptedness of couples till after they are married. If they then find themselves unsympathetic and morally unsuited to one another, we should consider it highly immoral that they should continue to live together. Our bodies are held to be so secondary in importance to our minds, that we never give them a thought in judging of our mutual adaptability. Now, the main purpose of marriage is to secure a partner with whom it would be pleasant and profitable to spend your life. The most beautiful body would not reconcile you to a thoroughly unsuitable mind; and a really congenial mind might easily be found in a body which did not display perfect symmetry of proportion and perfect beauty of features. You terrestrials know little of the mere physique of one another, as you are always enveloped in those clothes that serve to conceal your bodies and often to hide defects. Of the moral qualities of one another you can know, before marriage, just as little
