A CHAPTER ON LOVERS. 247 



dinner. Sir ?" and a fourth is equally rash that he may see a fashionahly 

 dressed woman at the top of his table, and hear himself spoken of as 



the •' happy husband of the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. .** 



Ninety-nine marry because their considerate grandfathers have left them a 

 rich, old-fashioned house, with plenty of plate and linen, and china, and 

 glass, and so forth, and they have just brains enough to know that the same 

 cannot well prosper unless a wife be at the head of the whole. One 

 espouses a girl because she dances divinely; another because her voice 

 harmonises so effectively with his in his favourite duet, that he snatches, 

 eagerly, at the means of securing its accompaniment for life ; alas ! poor 

 Affettuoso ! too often does the voice of thy beloved warble in thine ears 1 

 The clergyman marries because he deems it respectable and due to the 

 cloth ; the medical man to ensure the confidence of *' family people ;'* 

 the schoolmaster to guarantee "maternal tenderness" to the olive-shoots 

 placed under his care ; the tradesman to be able to attend to his customers ; 

 and the poor man and labourer to find a home and a helpmate. 



One more sketch, and a truce ! Here is the fortune-hunter, a 

 bankrupt too often in character as well as in means; generally of good 

 figure and face, always of dashing exterior and showy accomplishment; 

 insinuating and assiduous, gay, seductive, and voluble ; full of animation 

 and drollery ; professing a chivalrous respect for ** the sex," and eager 

 to parade his bravery on all possible occasions when a kdy hangs on his 

 arm. Let us tear off his mask — only gaze at him ! needy, desperate, 

 and rapacious ! cold-blooded and narrow-minded, ungraced with a sense 

 of shame or a feeling of gratitude, and repaying, with insulting neglect, 

 or absolute ruffianism, the woman to whose tenderness he is indebted fo 

 the very means of subsistence, and the wealth which he squanders on 

 the most infamous associates ! 



Ah ! Kate — sweet girl ! beware — the basilisk is more innocent ; the 

 locust less common than this pesiof society ! but never may thy guileless 

 heart be wrung, or ihy fine spirit bowed down and broken by the 

 remorseless barbarity of the " wolf in sheep's clothing !" 



E. 



The most eulogistic epitaph which the ancients could place on the 

 monument of a good housewife was that. 



Casta vixit 

 Lanam fecit 

 Domum servavit. 



We refer our fair readers to any of their friends who may be ** learned 

 Thebans'' for a translation of the lines. 



Minute Carving. — Pennant, in his " History of Wales," gives the 

 following instance of the ingenuity of an artist : — '*At Halston, in Shrop- 

 shire, the seat of the Myttons, is preserved a carving, much resembling 

 that mentioned by Walpole, in his anecdotes of painting, vol. ii. p. 42. 

 It is the portrait of Charles I., full-faced, cut on a peach -stone ; above is 

 a crown ; his face and clothes, which are vandyck dress, are painted; on 

 the reverse is an eagle, transfixed with an arrow ; and round it is this 

 motto, ' 1 feathered this arrow.' The whole is most admirably executed, 

 and is set in gold, with a crystal on each side. It is supposed to be the 

 work of Nicholas Briot, a great graver of the Mint, in the time of 

 Charles I." 



NO. IV. 2 K 



