Were engagements less readily dissolved, divorces would be more frequent even than they are now.

(3) Parental dictation is almost unknown in America; nowhere else have young men and women such absolute freedom to choose their own soul-mate. Hence Individual Preference, on which the ardour of Love depends in the highest degree, has full sway. The comparative absence of barriers of rank and social grade also makes it easier for a man to find and claim his real Juliet.

(4) This dependence of Love on Individualisation gives it another advantage in America. For nowhere is there so great a mixture of nationalities as here; and, away from home, a national peculiarity of feature or manners has a sort of individualising effect. Till we get used to such national peculiarities through their constant recurrence we are apt to judge almost every woman in a new city attractive. From this point of view Love may be defined as an instinctive longing to absorb national traits, and blend them all in the one cosmopolitan type of perfect Personal Beauty.

(5) There are beautiful women in all countries of the world, but no country has so many pretty girls as America. Money and rank find it hard to compete with such loveliness, hence Love has its own way. Here alone is it possible to find heiresses who have failed to get married through lack of Beauty. Personal Beauty is the great matchmaker in America; and thus it comes that Beauty is ever inherited and multiplied. For Love is the cause of Beauty as Beauty is the cause of Love.

One more characteristic of American Love remains to be noted—the most unique of all. American women are of all women in the world the most self-conscious, and have the keenest sense of humour. To these quick-witted damsels the sentimental sublimities of amorous Hyperbole, which may touch the heart of a naïve German or Italian girl, are apt to appear dangerously near the ludicrous; hence an American lover, if he is clever enough, deliberately covers the step which separates the sublime from the ridiculous. He gilds the gold of his compliments by using the form of playful exaggeration, which is the more easy to him because exaggeration is a national form of American humour. Mr. Howells’s heroes often make love in this fashion. The lover in The Lady of the Aroostook spices his flatteries with open burlesque, and succeeds admirably with this new Ars Amoris; and Colville in Indian Summer says to Imogene: “Come, I’ll go, of course, Imogene. A fancy-ball to please you is a very different thing from a fancy-ball in the abstract.”

“Oh, what nice things you say! Do you know, I always admired your compliments? I think they’re the most charming compliments in the world.”

“I don’t think they’re half so pretty as yours; but they’re more sincere.”

“No, honestly. They flatter, and at the same time they make fun of the flattery a little; they make a person feel that you like them even while you laugh at them.”

Perfect success in this form of flattery requires a talent for epigram. Not many, unfortunately, even in America, are poets and wits at the same time, like Mr. Howells; but there is an abundance of clever compliments nevertheless, and they are apt to assume the form of playful exaggeration.