Personal Ads from the 19th Century

Don't neglect those Victorian Top Sites links -- they can lead to some real gems! http://www.advertisingforlove.com/ showcases old time personal ads.

The ad that started it all. [...] I thought doing a project about personal advertisements might be interesting, and skimming through old, nineteenth-century newspapers I did find a few, but nothing that seemed very promising. Then I ran across this guy. Not to sound cliched, but there's no way my dissertation would have gotten off the ground if it hadn't been for him. The ad is pretty long (as you see), so I'm transcribing it below. 

A young gentleman in all respects favorably situated in life, as life is commonly estimated, but still wanting the essential element of happiness; of prepossessing appearance and manners, elevated aims, and, he trusts, no ordinary capabilities and attainments, independent in thought and action, enlarged, liberal and charitable in views, to whom all modes (if honorable) are alike, so they achieve the desired end, despising the narrow bigotry and conventionalities of society, which, by interposing barriers to the free intercourse of the sexes, and thus limiting our choices, condemn multitudes of even the most favored to lives of celibacy and misery; regarding the world as his matrimonial field, and believing that it contains somewhere the congenial spirit – the “bright particular star” – the light of whose blessed presence and sweet influence his social confines, extensive as contracted souls would consider them, have shut him out from, adopts this method as the only one open to him of testing the reality of his faith and hopes. He makes worldly advantages, beyond unquestionable respectability, no condition; but none who, to an agreeable person, expressive face and engaging manners – in short, an attractive tout ensemble externally – do not unite brains and heart (the latter especially) of no common order, need reply; and none such, however high their positions, need fear to do so, for their incognitos will of course remain in their own keeping should not a correspondence lead to an acquaintance, in which case the world will be none the wiser as to the means. He is no wife-seeker on easy terms; he intends this for no husband-seekers of the same class, but only for those who, with resources of soul and wealth of affection greater than their opportunities however great, can (at least in an exceptional case, as this claims to be,) rise above the prejudice of mode and tyranny of custom in the search for happiness, and in the hope of escaping the relentless social constriction which crushes our best aspirations within the folds of its “circles” and thus dooms us to become the helpless victims of mere matrimonial chance or accident. Full letters (including description, personal and mental,) solicited, as indicative of character and capacity. Address BERTRAM - June 4, 1864