"Lord! when you have enough what need you Yet with embraces curses oft I mixt,

Rich luscious wines, that youthful blood improve,| How quaint an appetite in woman reigns !

ife'er I slept, I dream'd of him alone,

And dreams foretell, as learned men have shown,
All this I said, but dreams, sirs. I had none;
I follow'd but my crafty crony's lore,
Who bid me tell this lie-and twenty more.
Thes day by day, and month by month we past;
It pleas'd the Lord to take my spouse at last.
I tore my gown, I soil'd my locks with dust,
And beat my breasts, as wretched widows-must.
Before my face my handkerchief I spread,
To hide the floods of tears I did not shed.
The good man's coffin to the church was borne ;
Around the neighbours, and my clerk too, mourn,
Bet as he march'd, good gods! he show'd a pair
Of legs and feet so clean, so strong, so fair!
Oftwenty winters' age he seem'd to be;
1(to say truth) was twenty more than he;
Bet vigorous still, a lively buxom dame,
And and a wondrous gift to quench a flame.
A conjuror once, that deeply could divine,
Assur'd me Mars in Taurus was my sign.
As the stars order'd, such my life has been,
Alas, alas! that ever love was sin!
Fair Venus gave me fire and sprightly grace,
And Mars assurance and a dauntless face.
By virtue of this powerful constellation
I follow'd always my own inclination.

But to my tale.-A month scarce pass'd away,
With dance and song we kept the nuptial day.
Ai I possess'd I gave to his coinmand,

And close the sermon, as beseem'd his wit,
With some grave sentence cut of Holy Writ.
Oft would he say-Who builds his house on sands,
Pricks his blind horse across the fallow lands,
Or lets his wife abroad with pilgrims roam,
Deserves a fool's cap and long ears at home.
All this avail'd not; for whoe'er he be
That tells my faults, I hate him mortally;
And so do numbers more, I'd boldly say,
Men, women, clergy, regular, and lay.

My spouse (who was, you know, to learning
bred)

A certain treatise oft at evening read,
Where divers authors (whom the devil confound
For all their lies) were in one volume bound;
Valerius whole, and of St. Jerome part;
Chrysippus and Tertullian, Ovid's Art.
Solomon's Proverbs, Eloisa's Loves,

And many more than sure the Church approves.
More legends were there here of wicked wives,
Than good in all the Bible and Saints' Lives.
Who drew the Lion vanquish'd? 'Twas a man ;
But could we women write as scholars can,
Men should stand mark'd with far more wick-
edness

Than all the sons of Adam could redress.
Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
Those play the scholars who can't play the men,
And use that weapon which they have-their pen,
When old, and past the relish of delight,
Then down they sit, and in their dotage write
That not one woman keeps her marriage-vow,
face,(This by the way, but to my purpose now.)

My goods and chattels, money, house, and land:
t oft repented, and repent it stil! ;
He prov'd a rebel to my sovereign will;
Nay once, by Heav'n! he struck me on the
Hear but the fact, and judge yourselves the

case.

Stubborn as any lioness was I,

And knew full well to raise my voice on high;
A true a rambler as I was before,
And would be so in spite of all he swore,
He against this right sagely would advise,
And old examples set before my eyes;
Tell how the Roman matrons led their life,
Of Gracchus' mother, and Duilias' wife:

It chanc'd my husband on a winter's night,
Read in this book aloud with strange delight,
How the first female (as the scriptures show)
Brought her own spouse, and all his race to woe;
How Samson fell; and he whom Dejanire
Wrapp'd in th' envenom'd shirt, and set on fire;
How curs'd Eriphyle her lord betray'd,
And the dire ambush Clytemnestra laid;
But what most pleas'd him was the Cretan dame
And husband-bull, ob, monstrous! fye for shame!

He had by heart the whole detail of woe
Xantippe made her good man undergo;
How oft she scolded in a day he knew,
How many jordens on the sage she threw,
Who took it patiently, and wip'd his head,
"Rain follows thunder," that was all he said.
He read how Arius to his friend complain'd
A fatal tree was growing in his land,
On which three wives successively had twin'd
A sliding noose, and waver'd in the wind.
"Where grows this plant," replied the friend,
"oh! where?

For better fruit did never orchard bear;
Give me some slip of this most blissful tree,
And in my garden planted it shall be."

Then how two wives their lords' destruction
prove,

Through hatred one, and one through too much
love,

That for her husband mix'd a poisonous draught,
And this for lust an amorous philtre bought;
The nimble juice soon seiz'd his giddy head,
Frantic at night, and in the morning dead.

How some with swords their sleeping lords have
slain,

And some have hammer'd nails into their brain, And some have drench'd them with a deadly potion;

All this he read, and read with great devotion.
Long time I heard, and swell'd, and blush'd,
and frown'd;

But when no end of these vile tales I found,
When still he read, and laugh'd and read again,
And half the night was thus consum'd in vain,
Provok'd to vengeance, three large leaves I tore,
And with one buffet fell'd him on the floor.
With that my husband in a fury rose,
And down he settled me with hearty blows.
I groan'd, and lay extended on my side;
"Oh! thou hast slain me for my wealth, (I cried)
Yet I forgive thee-take my last embrace"
He wept, kind soul! and stoop'd to kiss my face,
I took him such a box as turn'd him blue,
Then sigh'd and cried, " Adien, my dear, adieu!"

་་

But after many a hearty struggle past,
I condescended to be pleas'd at last.
Soon as he said, "My mistress and my wife!
Do what you list the term of all your life;"
I took to heart the merits of the cause,
And stood content to rule by wholesome laws;
Receiv'd the reins of absolute command,
With all the government of house and land,
And empire o'er his tongue and o'er his hand
As for the volume that revil'd the dames,
"Twas torn to fragments and condemn'd to flames.
Now Heav'n on all my husband's gone bestow
Pleasures above, for tortures felt below:

That rest they wish'd for grant them in the
grave,

And bless those souls my conduct help'd to save!
THE WORLD.

What is the world? a term that men have got,
To signify,-not one in ten knows what;
A term with which no more precision passes,
To point out herds of men, than herds of asses.
In common use, no more it means we find,
Than many fools in one opinion join'd.
WIFE'S AFFECTION.

cruel Death, why wert thou so unkind
To take my husband, and leave me behind?
Thou shouldst have taken both of us, if either,
Which would have been more grateful to the

survivor.

LIVING IN STYLE.

In no instance have I seen grasping after style more whimsically exhibited than in the family of my old acquaintance Timothy Giblet. I recollect old Giblet when I was a boy, and he was the post surly curmudgeon I ever knew. He was a perfect scarecrow to the small-fry of the day, and inherited the hatred of all these unlucky little shavers; for never could we assemble about his door of an evening to play, and make a little hubbub, but out he sallied from his nest like a spider, flourished bis Icrew in the twinkling of a lamp. I perfectly reformidable horsewhip, and dispersed the whole

member a bill he sent in to my father for a pane of young ladies could dance the waltz, thunder Loglass I had accidentally broken, which came well doiska, murder French, kill time, and commit vionigh getting me a sound flugging; and I remember, lence on the face of nature in a landscape in waterperfectly, that the next night I revenged myself colours, equal to the best lady in the land; and by breaking half-a-dozen. Giblet was as arrant a the young gentlemen were seen lounging at corners grub-worm as ever crawled; and the only rules of of streets, and driving tandem; heard talking loud right and wrong he cared a button for were the rules at the theatre, and laughing in church, with as of multiplication and addition; which he practised much ease and grace, and modesty, as if they had mach more successfully than he did any of the rules been gentlemen all the days of their lives. of religion or morality. He used to declare they And the Giblets arrayed themselves in scarlet, were the true golden rules: and he took special and in fine linen, and seated themselves in high care to put Cocker's arithmetic in the hands of his places; but nobody noticed them except to honour children, before they had read ten pages in the them with a little contempt. The Giblets made a bible or the prayer-book. The practice of these prodigious splash in their own opinion; but nofavourite maxims was at length crowned with the body extolled them except the tailors, and the milharvest of success; and after a life of incessant liners, who had been employed in manufacturing self-denial, and starvation, and after enduring all their paraphernalia. The Giblets thereupon being, the pounds, shillings, and pence miseries of a like Caleb Quotem, determined to have a place miser, he had the satisfaction of seeing himself at the review," fell to work more fiercely than worth a plum, and of dying just as he had deter-ever;-they gave dinners, and they gave balls; mined to enjoy the remainder of his days in con- they hired cooks, they hired confectioners, and templating his great wealth and accumulating they would have kept a newspaper in pay, had mortgages.

His children inherited his money; but they baried the disposition, and every other memorial of their father in his grave. Fired with a noble thirst for style, they instantly emerged from the retired lane in which themselves and their accomplishments had hitherto been buried; and they blazed, and they whizzed, and they cracked about town, like a nest of squibs and devils in a firework.

they not been all bought up at that time for the election. They invited the dancing men, and the dancing women, and the gormandizers, and the epicures of the city, to come and make merry at their expense; and the dancing men, and the dancing women, and the epicures, and the gormandizers, did come; and they did make merry at their expense; and they eat, and they drank, and they capered, and they danced, and they -laughed at their entertainers.

Having once started, the Giblets were deter- Then commenced the hurry and the bustle, and mined that nothing should stop them in their ca- the mighty nothingness of fashionable life;-such reer, until they had run their full course and rattling in coaches! such flaunting in the streets! arrived at the very tip-top of style. Every tailor, such slamming of box-doors at the theatre! such every shoemaker, every coachmaker, every milli-tempest of bustle and unmeaning noise wherever ner, every mantua-maker, every paper-hanger, every piano-teacher, and every dancing-master in the city, were enlisted in their service; and the willing wights most courteously answered their call, and fell to work to build up the fame of the Giblets, as they had done that of many an as piring family before them. In a little time the

they appeared! The Giblets were seen here and there and every where ;-they visited every body they knew, and every body they did not know; and there was no getting along for the Giblets, Their plan at length succeeded. By dint of din ners, of feeding and frolicking the town, the Giblet family worked themselves into notice, and