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220 it not only is possible, but one which has overtaken our nearest of neighbors. To this pass the Mater Amorum, Venus herself, has already been brought. She betrays it by the wrinkles which modern observation has revealed

upon her face. Innocent critics, with a gallantry one would hardly have credited them,—which shows how one may wrong even the humblest of creatures,—have denied the existence of these marks of age, on the chivalrous a priori assumption that it could not possibly be true because never seen before. Their negation, in naïve ignorance of the facts, partakes the logic of the gallant captain, who, when asked by a lady to guess her age, replied: "'Pon my word, I haven't the