Since, however, we have spent some time in reflecting upon this important matter, we would observe that there are many methods of choosing more or less successfully, even though the choice be promptly made.

It is, for example, beyond doubt that the probabilities will be in your favor: 

I. If you have chosen a young lady whose temperament resembles that of the women of Louisiana or the Carolinas.

To obtain reliable information concerning the temperament of a young person, it is necessary to put into vigorous operation the system which Gil Blas prescribes, in dealing with chambermaids, a system employed by statesmen to discover conspiracies and to learn how the ministers have passed the night.

II.  If you choose a young lady who, without being plain, does not belong to the class of pretty women.

We regard it as an infallible principle that great sweetness of disposition united in a woman with plainness that is not repulsive, form two indubitable elements of success in securing the greatest possible happiness to the home.

But would you learn the truth?  Open your Rousseau; for there is not a single question of public morals whose trend he has not pointed out in advance.  Read: 

“Among people of fixed principles the girls are careless, the women severe; the contrary is the case among people of no principle.”

To admit the truth enshrined in this profound and truthful remark is to conclude, that there would be fewer unhappy marriages if men wedded their mistresses.  The education of girls requires, therefore, important modifications in France.  Up to this time French laws and French manners instituted to distinguish between a misdemeanor and a crime, have encouraged crime.  In reality the fault committed by a young girl is scarcely ever a misdemeanor, if you compare it with that committed by the married woman.  Is there any comparison between the danger of giving liberty to girls and that of allowing it to wives?  The idea of taking a young girl on trial makes more serious men think than fools laugh.  The manners of Germany, of Switzerland, of England and of the United States give to young ladies such rights as in France would be considered the subversion of all morality; and yet it is certain that in these countries there are fewer unhappy marriages than in France.

LV.  “Before a woman gives herself entirely up to her lover, she ought to consider well what his love has to offer her.  The gift of her esteem and confidence should necessarily precede that of her heart.”

Sparkling with truth as they are, these lines probably filled with light the dungeon, in the depths of which Mirabeau wrote them; and the keen observation which they bear witness to, although prompted by the most stormy of his passions, has none the less influence even now in solving the social problem on which we are engaged.  In fact, a marriage sealed under the auspices of the religious scrutiny which assumes the existence of love, and subjected to the atmosphere of that disenchantment which follows on possession, ought naturally to be the most firmly-welded of all human unions.