If young ladies of our acquaintance connected themselves by marriage with men who were rather above than below them in property or station, we considered it, without exception, reasonable and estimable.

But if a man, whose connexions and prospects were similar to our own, looked round him for a wife in our house, we considered it great audacity, and treated it accordingly.

We were secretly looking out for genteeler and richer individuals, who again, on their part, were looking out for genteeler and richer individuals than we .-- N.

B.This _looking-out_ in the great world is a very useful thing, both for gentlemen and ladies, although anybody who would be _naive_ enough to acknowledge as much, would not be greatly in favour either with those who looked-out or those who did not.
In the mean time, a spirit was developed within me, which full of living energy woke to the sense of its nonentity--to a sense of the enslaving contradictions in which it moved, and to the most vehement desire to free itself from them.

As yet, however, I did not understand what I was to do with my restless spirit.