Up to the present day, the sentiments naturally attendant on the purchase system of marriage have received no serious check.

In strict accordance with hereditary preconceptions, civilised women have been carefully trained, while the ideas of young men are developed on lines that accurately correspond, so that the type of conduct and sentiments to which the young girl is educated, is exactly that which the young man has learnt to expect; or if it is not always quite so exact as he might wish, the difference is scornfully set down to the discredit of the rebel; and when such differences become too numerous, loud lamentations arise, and prophecies become frequent of the approaching collapse of society.

However, on the whole, the young man has had little reason to complain. Departures from the antique pattern of feminine excellence have been rare indeed, considering the rigidity of that pattern, and the tremendous forces which it at once concealed and rendered futile. The model has been accepted with scarcely a murmur, and followed, perforce, for centuries with such fidelity that no other design has seemed even possible to most of us, much less preferable.

To the preservation of orthodoxy on these subjects, our conditions have of course brought powerful assistance.