CHAPTER XVII. MATRIMONIAL ADVERTISEMENTS AND AGENCIES.

we have given will be sufficient to show the character of the newspaper from which we have selected them, as well as the credulity of its public, who are either gulled into paying for matrimonial applications, or deluded into purchasing it in the hope that by its means husbands or wives may be secured. That Oxford “double firsts,” Cambridge wranglers, members of Parliament, military and naval officers of high rank, peers of the realm, and beneficed clergymen, would send twaddling and ungrammatical advertisements to this paper, so as to secure wives, we no more believe than we do that eminent authoresses and ladies of rank and property would avail themselves of its services to secure to themselves husbands. If we are wrong, and these advertisements are all bonâ fide, and what they profess to be, then a paternal Government, which legislates against betting and strong drink, which puts a tax on quack medicines, and subscribes to compulsory education, should fulfil its métier by preventing the public exposure of idiotcy we have just been contemplating, more especially as no good can possibly be the outcome of it.