THE MATCHMAKER. A NOVEL. BY THE AUTHOR ОР "COUSIN GEOFFREY," AND "THE MARRYING MAN." IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1842. 388. THE MATCHMAKER. CHAPTER I. "Bad luck on the pennie that tempted my Minnie Fear There are two kinds of matchmakersthose who make matches to kindle a flame, and those who make matches which, alas! often have the effect of extinguishing one. The reader may like to know of which species of matchmaker we are about to treat. not, ye worshippers of the Real! fear not, sensible utilitarians, who, travelling at the rate of thirty miles an hour, in the easy, softly-cushioned, first-rate seats of a railway carriage, glide at a similar pace through the VOL. I. B pages of the last new novel, eager for a tale of "Life as it is;" impatient of Romance, and of the Past, as you would be of journeying in one of the bygone stage-coaches, deemed of yore so rapid of motion. No; we mean not to weary the public ear with a "Rosa Matilda" story of a romantic beggar-girl, who has made small matches for others, till, by crying them in clear and dulcet tones, she makes a great match for herself, and quits the scene, after seven volumes of romantic adventure, wedded to at least an earl! Our matchmakers have a fancy for earls, too; but the former matchmaker ranks with vagrants and vagabonds, and yet is she engaged in a more sensible, a more reputable, and a less dangerous species of matchmaking than she who seeks to knit together carelessly, as ladies knit silks of different shades, two characters perhaps in startling contrast, two destinies never intended to unite, two immortal souls brought together by her designs, not by their own mutual sympathies, and fettered through all time, perhaps through all eternity. |