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Show THE MARRIAGE MABKET. The November Galaxy (Dwyer) has a critical ppar illustrating the social drama of EugUnd, with respect especially es-pecially to the fashionable matrimonial matri-monial market. Modern wife, or huabaud-huiiting, which ia the inevitable inevi-table game of youthful society, aa ; well aa of its mamas, places its devotes de-votes in some of the moit ridiculous and painful aspects. It ctuina to the car of Btifi uniformity all the marriageable mar-riageable jfirls, who would not run the risk of being regarded eccentric. There is no escape for the English girl; she must join the whirl and tread tho mill, under pain of being called odd, which ia almost equivalent to being crossed out of the book of matrimony. She can exhibit no natural emotion; enthusiasm of any BOrt is soon stunted, and the germs of individuality crushed. Out of a hundrod girls in a London ball room thers is scarcely more individuality than among a hundred Paris war dolls. Thoy all liko dancing, adore music, read novels, love fijwera and admire the last fashionable preacher, or at least, they all say they do. The men are described a3 much the Bamo miserable nonentities. Yet they aro all on the lookout for a good match. No one thinks it degrading to go into the world, night alter night, seeking prey of this description. descrip-tion. The ball room, the concert hall and the church are successively succes-sively the arenas in which this struggle for place and gold is fought. Do the crowds of well-dressed well-dressed women who attend the oratorios and operas and churches really don all that finery in honor of music, or in honor of God, and not lor the sake of Lord So-and So, or the rich commoner, Mr. Smith? Anything Any-thing and everything for the gilt prize, and a whole Iiletime to learn the lesson that all ia not gold that glitters. The disappointed man or woman of half a dozen London seasons is described de-scribed as a sad sight. They maintain main-tain their undignified position to the last moment, notwithstanding they would bo really gl.id to drop out of the ranks. They would have been at any tttno delighted if chance had dropped them down in a quiet cottage, cot-tage, with the surroundings of a happy homo and a moderate incomo. But they never would have the nerve to broak from their sst, and so live on in extravagant misery, without with-out tho hope of a homo and a son-Bible son-Bible companion. They could live a happy, pleasant life on the sura which now barely enables them to keep up their society existence, to them the veriest sham and fraud. Whiio the man is making himself miserable to catch an heiress, the heiress is torturing herself for the lord, and though they both occasion- , ally succeed, thesuccess isnotunfre-quentty isnotunfre-quentty a blunder, devoid of the anticipated an-ticipated happiness. It often happens hap-pens that the ineligible youth, who is Bnubbed by aspiring girls or their parents turns out in middle age a prosperous man and a desirable match. Don't you think the young matron who lives in a six-roomed cottage, on three hundred hund-red pounds a year, is happier among her domestic delights in her husband's hus-band's company, than tho fino lady whose balls and dresses" and diamonds form her highest conceptions of life? According to the Xttuvd-iy Review this exa-igexati d .state of society is leading to sonic dangerous practices. The idea ot "getting on" without ro-gard ro-gard to tho nita'm ot S'u;eesi, tends to set at defiance thu.su mora! ideas which were formerly reeugnized by English mothers, who now open their houses to a great deal of gilded rascality. They might, if they made demerit and not poverty the cauao ol exclusion, virtuo and not success tho title to reception, placo uomo check upon the corruption which is bo in-Bolcntly in-Bolcntly rampant now in society. Of course there are pure, simplo, unworldly un-worldly maidens in England; they grow up, marry, aud live as model wives and moth cm, good mistresses and careful huuij-ikeopuM, but they do not belong to 'Society." In the lower half of the middle class tho liberty lib-erty allow(?i to young girls grows ' yearly more and more unchecked. They walk alone, travel alone, visit alone. "Though English society has not yet sanctioned the custom of young girls going out to evening parties and balls alone with young men (and those men not even their betrothed husbands) and of forming form-ing equally independent bathing parties at public sea-side resorts, there is no telling how soon such habits may bo copied and approved by the formerly prudish English. The Review well asks how the social check is to be applied if wealth and rank are to be worshipped by Bociety in the form of criminal rakishnees for the supposed necessity of desirable alii-I alii-I ances. In moat of these nicely calculated calcu-lated marriages there is no bond, no union, noaacrament. This is a picture of the London marriage market, drawn by an English Eng-lish artist. Does there exist a higher social life in America's society, which looks above the pursuit of wealth and position in making up the matrimonial matrimo-nial rolls for its sons aud daughters? Perhaps New York and Boston and Washington may tell a better story than London and Paris; but it is to be feared that the same vulgar mania, the same convenient morality, afiects equally republican and monarchical mon-archical society, and that we too will have to look to the unfashionable classes as the only hopo for an escape from the contamination of the heartless heart-less match-making which prevails in the capitals of the old world. |