circumstance of her having tasted it first proves that she was anxious to find out, at personal risk, whether it was wholesome, before she recommended it. Ever since then the student of history will not require to be reminded of the influence of love in battle, murder, and sudden death, answering Talleyrand's "Cherchons la Femme" in almost every important instance, and constituting the proudest emblazonment on the female escutcheon. Considering all the facts and arguments adduced, there can be no doubt, I think, that falling in love is an aberration of the intellect. The next and obvious question is,-what can be done to relieve it? Physiologists assert that Nature herself always endeavours to repel a poison that has been taken into the system, and suggests the proper remedy. It follows, therefore, that the very impulse to take the desired object is a medicinal craving, and that marriage is the naturally appointed cure for love. It has, I believe, been found efficacious in many instances, but without further experiment, I should be sorry to pronounce a definite opinion on so serious a subject. But if the possibilities of thorough cure are doubtful, especially in the case of the chronic patients, can nothing be done to prevent, to stamp out the infection or contagion, for it partakes of both natures? Are there any circumstances within our control that tend to develop, to perpetuate this affliction? Most assuredly, yes. class of pestilent persons, called "poets," "playwrights," and "story-tellers," assisted freely by people termed "artists," are continually employed in sowing the seeds of this dangerous malady. In book, song, drama, picture, they labour without ceasing, and with all the charms of insiduous A eloquence and designing art, to show that the desire to possess an individual of the opposite sex is the supreme object of humanity. All other things are subordinat, and only receive the honour of notice in proportion as they assist or affect the main design. They ask us to shed our bitterest tears if Theodore is prevented from acquiring his Aspasia; they demand our keenest gratification if he succeeds in securing that young person, and having done up the interesting pair into one parcel, they request us to believe that the gates of Paradise have opened to receive them for ever. The effect of all this upon the minds of the young is easy to understand, and it is hopeless to expect any beneficial change, so long as these missionaries are allowed to inculcate their pernicious doctrine. Therefore I say gag the poets, muzzle the novelists, render the dramatists dumb! Down with the painters! Remove from the libraries and place under lock and key all amatory writings and pictures; carefully abstain in conversation from any allusions to the forbidden thing; and in the course of a generation or two, there will be a race who will attend to the important business of life, unaffected by the disturbing influence of the so-called tender passion, and utterly oblivious of the obsolete exercise of "Falling in Love." TOYS. OYS illustrate the tastes of their possessors and typify their future career. The wooden horse, wheeled or rocking, the wooden or waxen doll, the tiny cannon, the silent gun, each and all are to the imagination of their infant owners most genuine realities. Fancy strives to supply the missing links that should unite them to actualities, and the fancy of a child is less cabined, cribbed, confined than that of a human being, sobered and saddened by the dark experience of adult life. How that innate pugnacity, which, in after years, it may be, will "seek the bubble reputation, even at the cannon's mouth," ranges its tin paint-bedaubed ranks and its mimic forts, till it can all but hear the deadly roar, and all but taste the certaminis gaudia, the rapture of the strife! And how the maiden motherhood of six years yearns for the idol of its infantine affections, and rocks to rest the battered deformity which stands to it as the perfect loveliness of babyhood! Oh for the careless days of pinafores, the happy hours when a wooden spade was an ambition, and a tin helmet was blessedness! "We are such things as dreams are made of." Even so; and strangely the two extremes of life arrive somewhat at the same estimate of things; with this difference, that children see in their toys realities, the aged see in life's so-called realities the toys of their full-grown existence. existence. "The child is father of the man.' "Men are but children of a larger growth." There are your texts to preach from, ye moralists and philosophers. Life is but a development of the toy affection, with change of the objects which are the symbols of its altered desires. The child realises the coming joys of maturity in its ligneous and metallic playthings. And those anticipated pleasures are tasted without the salt and vinegar, sorrows and cares which will mingle their sharpness and sourness with the sweets that shall be enjoyed hereafter. From the toys of the nursery to those of the playground, the change is simply that from contemplation to activity. The toy of the babe and the pre-scholastic urchin is one to be petted, caressed, and fondly nursed. That of the boy is one to be put to a practical use, that it may be a means to an end. And the toys of the man in his earliest manhood, what are they? The curves of eyebrows, the glances of sunny eyes, "the nods and becks, and wreathed smiles," the toyed-with "tangles of Neæra's hair," the delicate features, and the shapely form, these are the gladsome playthings of youth, which its vivid imagination, too, decks out in added graces, and illumes with a radiance that never was on cheek or brow,-the lustre of love, the glory of adoration. Well, indeed, will it be if the sober judgment of the after-time finds no disillusioning that shall make the fairy gold but withered leaves. Yet these idols of the heart are the poetry of existence that lives, moves, and has its being in that life of beauty which the beholder half creates, it may be, when the light of other days is faded. "Love adds a precious seeing to the eye," gilds refined gold, paints the lily, gives yet another perfume to the violet of woman's loveliness, and even lends a strange falsity of charms to plainness or deformity, till things are not what they seem :— "Creations of the mind? The mind can make If it can so people books, as the void of air, with living throngs, so can it also beautify and transfigure breathing beings. Ah! a rare artist is Love, and Fancy lends its romantic witchery to paint and magnify, and the adorer lies prostrate before his own creation, as Cook's Southsea Islander, in his primitive wonder and terror, endowed his hideous idols with a celestial awfulness to be trembled at and worshipped. And what costly toys are these! "Cursed with a taste," says Pope. Think of Samson and Delilah, Achilles and Briseis, Hercules and Omphale, Circe and Calypso, and their captives; or of that more historical pair, Antony and the Serpent of old Nile, the witch-woman Cleopatra; the Scotch siren Mary, "with eyes as bright and heart as hard as a diamond," whose train trailed through lovers' blood. Men's toys! The follies of wise men are the sport of fools. Bacon is disgraced for grasping at the toys of wealth and station. Walter Scott ruined himself for an ugly Gothic mansion, and more acres to add to those around it. "You hold the world, from Jove to Momus given, |