of traffic is carried on to this day. Many a sighing swain, smitten by the smiles of some sweet spinster, works out his salvation from the horrors of eelibacy, before his father-in-law, with fear and trembling. This state of things shows that man will do any thing to win woman, and it also shows, that woman is not free to kiss the winds as she pleases, and is very far from enjoying that privilege of choosing her own lord, to which she is of right entitle1. When Paris stole Helen from her liege Menelaus, the Greeks sieged Ilium ten long years on account of the theft; and yet Helen, Andromache, nor none of the rest of the beauties, dared to treat men as ladies do in the era now upon us. In Germany, the sex was not so abominably abused; but every where else, the inferiority of woman was considered unquestionable, and courtship necessarily could have no proper existence.

Courtship cannot be properly appreciated and conducted, where the sexes are held to be unequal. Where the will of woman is shackled, her inclinations are disregarded, and her affections are not suffered to flow as they list. This freedom is essential to the highest class of courtships. We acknowledge all the rights of woman, as Christians ought to, and here her step is queenly, and her smile priceless. She can now be coquettish; and if that terra incognita of antiquity, the beautiful fabric of the female skull, were examined by a skilful phrenologist, he would discover that a new organ, that of coquetry, had lifted itself up since the reformation, as islands have heaved themselves above surrounding surges, within the same period.

In these latter days, ladies not only exercise the natural right to smile on whom they please, but they have the privilege of wounding whomsoever they list, with the fatal archery of their charms; and such is the gallantry of the times, that, although man has the exclusive enactment of laws, he has framed none for the punishment of those potent fair ones, who send their unrequited lovers brokenhearted to the grave! Coquetry results naturally from these relations of the sexes. In the ante-christian ages, it can scarce be said to have had a local habitation and a name' on earth. It originated about the time that the Crusades kicked up such a dust on the surface of this, the most abused of all planets. Then, when men got mad and raved, and swore that female beauty was the most magical thing beneath the stars, woman began to exercise an undisputed authority over the sex called masculine. Beauty was throned in the supremacy of despotism, and the heart of man was the field on which its tyranny was exerted. A pretty woman, in a chivalrous age, is the completest and most exquisite tyrant, before whose mandates human hopes and fears ever rose or fell. The tyranny of civil government relinquishes its power before the inroads of radicalism; the tyranny of superstition relaxes the energy of its icy grasp on man's spirit, as the warming rays of genuine religion fall upon it; but the tyranny of beauty, more potent than either, clings to its victim till fear is lost in death, and hope triumphs in immortality. The enchaining spell of woman is the only thing which has had exemption from the ravages of decay, and which has defied the gnawings of the iron tooth of time. Older than the pyramids, it is still fresh in its youth; and

unnumbered ages after they shall haye been mingled with the dust of the desert, it shall hold its carnival in the heart of man, and celebrate its triumphs in his sighs, and tears, and bleeding affections!

While knight-errantry was at its height, woman's visible power was at its acmé. Then, love-stricken knights bestrode their chargers, and looking up at the stars of evening, swore the eyes of their mistresses shamed Golconda's gems, and wore a lustre far brighter than ever met the gaze of lunatic or lover, in the firmament on high. The sexes were unequal, and courtship was shorn of its dignity. Every woman was a queen, and men were suppliants for the smiles of haughty and fair-browed tyrants. It was woman's province to command, and man's to obey- that is, until the link irrevocable was wrought in their twin destinies. And after that consummation, oh! what a change was there, my countrywomen! Woman left the imperial chair-the purple gradually fell from her graceful shoulders the sceptre departed from the grasp of her little hand — and the career of the lioness of hearts was curbed forever! The suppliant lover became the imperious lord; the tiger expelled the lamb-like from his nature; and the masculine gender tyrannized over the domestic domain.

Not thus is it in the present age. Never was there a period to which the old saying, the 'gray mare is the better horse,' was more applicable. Woman is mistress, both before and after the vow to obey at the altar. Heavy charges against the present age, for its derelictions in matters of gallantry, have, we know, been made by those whose words were weighty. Burke poured forth a jeremiad over the grave of buried chivalry. The body is dead, but the spirit is with us. Were the age of chivalry gone, would heroes risk their lives, and stand up at only ten paces distance, living targets, to be shot down by rivals who, not content with taking away their sweethearts, must take away their lives, also? Were the age of chivalry gone, would poets sigh, and whine, commit suicide, take up their abodes in lunatic asylums, and die of broken hearts and all for love? We wot they would not! Then Charles Lamb, the gentle, the tender, the pathetic Elia, says, that so long as women are hanged, he will be hanged if he will believe in the swagger about modern gallantry. It must be confessed, that to behold a multitude of men engaged in the graceless business of hanging a woman, is not a spectacle remarkable for its refinement of gallantry; but then, if Lamb had looked among the crowd beneath the scaffold, he might have seen even boorish men resign without a sigh the most eligible situations to curious-eyed woman! Oh no! The age of chivalry is not gone; and although woman occasionally may hang, yet is her retribution ample; for who among us does she not suspend between a smile and tear, or hang high in air, midway betwixt hope and fear, until our sensibilities are stretched in agonizing tension?

Former times cannot parallel the present in the longevity of its courtships. Many a lover besieges the flint-walled heart of his mistress for a period greater than the Greeks required to siege and sack Ilium. Right frequent are courtships that run the length of a mortal generation, performed by modern epicures in love. Just think of it a moment, brother bachelor! You fall in love with some lady to

night, quite accidentally, and to-morrow, you commence a courtship, the purpose of which is to nullify the robbery perpetrated by her roguish eyes on your affections, by taking hers in exchange. Day after day, and year after year, you toil and dally on, now cheered by a rosy smile that falls on your heart as sweetly as the dew of Hermon, and now saddened by a frown black as Erebus. Thus alternating, like a pendulum, between sunshine and shadow, you keep time as regularly as a town-clock, until your hair is streaked with gray, the twilight of old age. In May, twenty years after date, you promise to pay to the blushing damsel, girt with satin and rainbowed with ribbons, at your side, at the altar, on demand, any amount of love and attentions that her happiness may require. Would you not take the blessed smile that breaks upon her lips, when she promises to 'love, honor and obey' you, as an ample recompense for all the fears and troubles you have suffered through the long campaign, the stout probation of twenty years of courtship? Twenty years are rather too long for the impatience of a warm-blooded lover; but better thus, than an extemporaneous wedding, after three days of eager wooing. Six calendar months may be well employed in courtship; and this is short enough; for who that plucks a blushing flower roughly from its parent stem, or enters the land of promise with a stranger, can properly appreciate the bloom of the one, or the delights of the other? Anticipation of pleasure is sweet, but never more so, than when love's honey mingles with it.

A man should not be too cowardly nor too slow in his courtships. The Bonapartean system of warfare may be used advantageously. Concentrate the forces of your charms on the enemy's weakest points, and depend upon it, her human nature can not resist you long. The ladies make use of the Parthian tactics. As the foe approaches, they fall back, meanwhile keeping up a brisk fire with the missiles which they, the world over, use so skilfully. Glances brilliant as flashing steel smiles that are daggers to man's affections - blushes, that glow like the evening's purple on the far-off cloud- thoughts and words that mean more than they express all fall on the attack

ing party with an influence fatal to bachelorism.

The fashionable system may be illustrated as follows. A gentleman, whiskered, and scowling, and looking as fierce as belligerent Mars, encounters a lady whose smile is perfectly bewitching. This is a lure, and a signal of warfare. Mars approaches Venus, and she, reflecting a portion of his own fiery redness, blushes, and effects a transit to some other place in illimitable space. He pursues her with the most indefatigable vigor. Scenes of dramatic interest soon transpire. They meet most fortuitously on all occasions; at parties they glance with savage fierceness at each other; he strives to persuade her that he is earnest and sincere, while she hops from him like a crippled sparrow, at times turning round and smiling, after the manner of the immortals, upon him. They strive to avoid each other; but the fates have decreed their union, and accidents bring them together. The gentleman bristles up and declares himself, and the lady puts her hand in her pocket, and signifies to him that she has better use for it. He snatches courage from despair, and re-commences his suit, with an ardor all-defying. She flies away on easy wing awhile, until, satisfied or fatigued with her long-sustained flight,

she comes fluttering to earth at last. Their romance is a tale of the past. are soon numbered among the prose

of human existence !

The game is his. They wed. Their poetry is gone. They articles in the great periodical

Go on lovers, and know the bliss of courtship! If your love is mutual, your pleasure will be elysian. Your barques are floating on the surface of a sunny sea, fragrant winds fill your sails, and breathe in music over the flashing waters. Far before, your cynosure, the star of hope, is gleaming forth its twinkling radiance. Let discretion be your helmsman, and after a blissful voyage, you shall enter the haven of love, on the shore of that rosy sea. What though the undulating wave may conjure up dark fears before you? It will but break the tedium of the passage: and when your dangers are over, your joys will be more brilliant in proportion to the depth of the shadows in the back-ground of the past.

S.