way of publicly exemplifying marriage suitabilities, certain national selections would be periodically made of both sexes; and if these selected suitabilities, thus theoretically mated, afterwards mutually agreed to actual marriage, they became, in a certain sense of social consideration, the State's family, and any children they might have were to be regarded with more or less of public concernment. This procedure was, in fact, no other than a very high-class scientific experiment, and society was then sufficiently advanced to so regard and benefit by it. The children of such State marriages were usually, as was fully expected, the most perfect of their time. Any other result would have been as surprising to all, as indeed it would have been reprehensible to the parties more immediately concerned.
The young people of those days, as we have said, looked well after their own matrimonial interests; and even the gentle young maiden, however diffident and filially obedient in all else, took this matter pretty much into her own hands. The parental experience and discretion, which had prevailed in former times, as far at least as regarded pecuniary considerations, had but scant tolerance now. "The settlements," in their old meaning, had drifted out of the reckoning. Indeed, from the facility, or rather the absolute certainty, with which an adequate living could be earned by due exertion and ability, in those days of high education and of the universal application of high art and science to all business life, the energetic and ambitious young wife was not anxious for a husband
