is dragged an insensate victim at the chariot-wheels of fashion, and cannot help himself. When he has arrived at the matrimonial block, out marches the executioner, looking so solemn and starchy in his surplice, that whatever faint vestige of courage may have survived in the bridegroom vanishes at the sight of him, and he gets so bewildered that he has scarcely voice enough left to give a faltering answer in the affirmative to the momentous question whether he will take for his wife the beautiful enchantress who has brought him to this pass. Meanwhile, glance at the bride! How bright and blest she looks, how radiant and benign, how serenely happy and self-possessed! To the Parson's inquiry whether she will accept the bridegroom for her husband, she replies, with calm confidence, in tones as clear as a silver bell, "I will; and she means it. Her courage is as great as her joy. She is as intrepid as lovely, and though she is the cynosure of all eyes, she never flinches. sweet composure, and tranquil, lady-like grace enhance beyond expression the charms of her beauty, and when the ceremony is over, she is still as "fresh as morning. roses newly washed with dew," to quote the words of William the Divine. All this is very, very wonderful, and may well engage the speculations of philosophers to get at the true cause and meaning of it. Oh! how I should like to be a bride. But I never shall be one: I begin to despair. The newly-wedded couple, with their train attendant of gleeful relatives, and their fair precursors, shedding flowers upon their path, having walked out of the church, amid the clashing of joy bells and the inspiriting strains of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March," played thunderingly upon the organ, repair to the house of the bride's parents, there to partake of an entertain Her ment sumptuous as incomprehensible. This proceeding, however irrational, would appear to be of venerable antiquity, seeing that Ben Johnson, in one of his comedies, enjoins the wedding guests, the wedding being over, to hie them to the father's dwelling, there to take part in the brilliant festivities : "With the phant'sies of hey-troll The cake in question, wherein, as some unamiable curmudgeons have been wont to assert, dwell all the sweets of matrimony, is one of these curious "institutions" which survive the lapse of time and the vicissitudes of fashion. Empires fall, crowns totter, dynasties decay, but the wedding-cake still maintains its ground. Its magical properties, however, are sadly on the wane, and the day is gone when people care to follow the example of the gentleman mentioned in the Spectator, who, "being resolved to try his fortune, and that he might be sure of dreaming pleasantly upon something at night, procured a handsome slice of bride-cake, which he placed very conveniently under his pillow." It is to be hoped that he left it there till morning, for his dreams would not have been of the pleasantest had he awakened in the middle of the night and eaten it. Surgit semper, etc., and the demon of indigestion has masked himself ere now even in so fascinating a shape as a handsome slice of bride-cake." The learned in material and moral analogies might find a theme for erudite inquiry even in this matter, and trace some manner of resemblance between the gorgeous piece of unwholesome confection 66 tears. ery which makes one's lips water and one's stomach ache, and the delusive visions of those lovers who, as Mr. H. J. Byron wittily expresses it, are "spoons before marriage and knives and forks after." But everything about a wedding breakfast is contradictory and inconsistent. It is a matter of course, and in fact quite de rigueur, that somebody must cry, though why or wherefore nobody could ever understand. There is but one thing better than keeping your daughter, and that is to give her away-not to throw her away, to be sure, but to give her away to an honest man ; and as every bridegroom is believed to be such a person until his villany is revealed, like that of other criminals, the occasion is, for the present at all events, one rather for smiles than On the other hand, a vast deal of twaddle in the way of felicitation is undoubtedly spoken on these bridal occasions. The speeches at a wedding-breakfast usually begin where common sense ends. From all lips come words of jocose congratulation, mingled with fervid aspirations for long life and happiness to the bride and bridegroom; but inasmuch as long life is an event of very rare occurrence, and nobody ever yet was happy, these wishes, however friendly, are a trifle foolish. "Nothing," observes the wicked Lord Lyttelton, "is so absurd as the tide of felicitations which flows in upon a poor newly married man, before he himself can determine -and much less the complimenting world-upon the propriety of them. Marriage is the grand lottery of life, and it is as great a folly to exult upon entering into it as on the purchase of a ticket in the State Wheel of Fortune. It is when the ticket has drawn a prize that we can answer to congratulations." This is every bit as true of the bride as of the bridegroom, and there is a touch of grim agony in the thought that at the very time when the bridesmaids are scattering rosy smiles around, and the "funny man" at the table is cracking his vapid jokes, the heroine of the occasion may possibly be haunted by the suspicion that, after all, she has married the wrong man; while he, poor wretch! may not be without misgivings that he, too, has wedded the wrong woman. Matrimony is, as the old pun goes, too often a mere matter of money. An American essayist has defined it most ungallantly as originating in an insane desire on the part of a young man to pay for the board and lodging of a young woman. It sometimes happens, to be sure, that it is the young woman who pays for the board and lodging of the young man; but, however that may be, this, at least, is certain, that a mariage de convenance gives little promise of felicity, and that the compliments and good-wishes of the wedding guests on such an occasion, however kindly meant and gracefully expressed, are the merest moonshine. matters not how rich the bride-cake may be, or how beautiful the trousseau, or how large the dowry, or how sumptuous the breakfast, or how numerous the old slippers, or how thick the shower of rice wherewith the newly-wedded couple may be pelted into their carriage, a wedding is a sham, and there is not the faintest chance of comfort in the marriage state, unless the bride, standing defiantly upon the rights of her sex, have made up her mind that man and wife are one, and that one is the WIFE. It THE DELIGHT OF EARLY RISING. 66 THERE is one way, and one only, of enjoying life, and that is to rise early. "Dilliculo surgere saluberrimum est," says the classic proverb, and no truer words were ever either written or uttered. All good and wise men are of accord in denouncing the absurdity, not to say the sinfulness, of lying late in bed. "I would have inscribed on the curtains of your bed and the walls of your chamber-if you do not rise early, you can make progress in nothing. If you do not set apart your hours of reading, if you suffer yourself, or any one else, to break in upon them, your days will slip through your hands unprofitable and frivolous, and unenjoyed by yourself." So spake the great Lord Chatham. "The difference," says Dr. Doddridge, “ between rising at five and seven o'clock in the morning for the space of forty years, supposing a man to go to bed at the same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to the addition of ten years to a man's life." In the year 1784, Dr. Franklin published an ingenious essay on the advantages of early rising as a mere piece of economy. He estimated the saving that might be made in Paris alone by using sunshine instead of candles at ninetysix millions of French livres, or four millions sterling per annum. Dr. Todd is dogmatic and peremptory in inculcating the necessity of being up with the lark, or, if possible, before him. "Few," quoth he, "ever lived to a great age, and fewer still ever became distinguished, who were not in the habit of early rising. You |