422 
But in all and every matter, the Rector 
is soon aided by a blooming bride of his 
own—his patron’s loyely and accomplished 
sister. On the wedding day, the Baronet 
presents the Rector with £5,000 and that 
very day, too, the Rector’s own estate, in a 
period of inconceivable shortness, produced 
a clear £2,000 a year. He is thus rich, 
and able to share in the expenses attending 
the bounties of the Baronet, to which how- 
ever he does not, to our recollection, appear 
to contribute at all; and, really, the Baro- 
net himself does wonders with his £5,000 
a year—we detected in the details of ex- 
pense what would dip deep into £10,000— 
most unexpectedly, however, and. luckily 
we should think, his wife poured into. his 
lap, one fine summer’s morning, £120,000, 
besides odds and ends. 
The Rector, of course, must be expected 
to set the tone to every thing, and, accord- 
ingly, example is his especial field. He 
could not even marry without giving a spe- 
cimen—the marriage must needs take place 
on the Sunday morning before service, and 
the bride herself walk to the church—she, 
however, declared herself quite incompetent, 
and that one point was conceded; the bride- 
groom read prayers with due solemnity, as 
if nothing had happened, and Mr. Arch- 
deacon Cambridge—from Richmond Mea- 
dows—good man, we never expected to 
hear of him again—preached a charming 
Sermon on the text—‘“‘a good woman is 
above riches”—for which the bride herself 
gracefully and biushingly made her best 
curtsey and thanks. But then—the con- 
versations that followed at the Rector’s tea- 
table, that afternoon! “‘the state of the lower 
order of angels cannot be much above this.”’ 
After some years of matchless felicity, 
comes again upon the stage, the lady who 
had made so desperate an attack upon the 
curate’s virtue—a letter from France an- 
nounces her approaching end, and her 
desire to obtain his personal forgiveness for 
the injury she had endeavoured to inflict 
upon him. With his wife’s concurrence, 
he flies to present the said forgiveness, and 
offer, at the same time, his advice and cons 
solation. On his arrival, he was introduced 
to a magnificent apartment, and dinner was 
instantly served up by half-a-dozen attend- 
ants—but no lady. On inquiring into the 
state of her health, he is only told, her lady- 
ship will herself reply to the question ; and 
accordingly on the following morning she 
presents herself, not dying, but glowing 
with matured beauty, and burning with 
rage—revenge had been her object in send- 
ing for the good man—she showers down 
upon him reproaches and upbraidings — 
tells him he is her prisoner—her slave— 
she will keep him till she is tired of him. 
By her directions, his wife is already in- 
formed, and convinced he came willingly—~ 
that she had been struck to the brain by the 
intelligence—that she was now a wandering 
maniac, &c. Part of this was too true— 
Monthly Review of Literature, 
[Ocr-. 
the intelligence had been -conveyed—and 
her mind fad given way. All this had 
been accomplished by a treacherous servant, 
who, repenting at the sight of her sorrow, 
and confessing, enabled the Rector’s friends, 
by the aid of some gens d’armes, to rescue 
him. At first the lady resisted, but the 
gens d’armes knew their business, and the 
Rector fought like a lion. Three of the 
servants attacked him at once, meaning to 
carry him off to another cover—but mark 
how the bold Rector foiled them—one he 
felled at a blow, and then seizing the other 
two, each by his collar, dashed their foolish 
faces against each other, till both were dis- 
abled ; and by the time half-a-dozen more 
came to their assistance, in rushed the 
civil power, and all was immediately as it 
should be. 
After a most critical period, the Rector’s 
unhappy lady recovers her reason, and just 
as all was getting quiet and comfortable 
again, comes in person the same autocrat 
lady, announced by an avant courier to be 
in a dying state—she is admitted—she is 
really ill—had in desperation swallowed 
poison—is put to bed—receives the Rec- 
tor’s forgiveness — puts her will into his 
hands—and dies. The Rector finds him- 
self the sudden master of £25,000 a year, 
and £40,000 ready money, and seems puz- 
zied what to do with it all. “ This,” he 
exclaims, ‘‘ will indeed be the most severe 
of all my trials, and the deceased lady could 
not have punished me more, even for an 
injury, than by this bequest.’’ Though thus 
the richest man in the parish of Overton— 
“he is,”’ the writer observes in conclusion; 
“the humblest’’—and evidently best. able 
to afford it. 
There is an under plot or two, of course; 
to make the necessary degree of complexity 
—one rake reformed, and another left unre- 
formed—and really many a touching scene 
from the mere juxta-position of things, and 
notwithstanding the silliness of much, and 
the emptiness of more. 
Strictures of the Rectum, by Frederick 
Salmon ; 1828.—Books of a professional 
character scarcely fall within the pale of 
general literature; but we have not always 
overlooked matters of utility, though not 
coming precisely within our general scope, 
and on the claim of utility, the book before 
us may very allowably be admitted. Stric- 
tures of the Urethra are the subjects of mul- 
titudes of books, but Strictures of the Rec- 
tum appear almost to have escaped notice. 
A Mr. White, of Bath, was the first Eng- 
lish surgeon, it appears, who published a 
regular treatise upon it, but the practical 
knowledge he conimunicated seems to have 
been but little atiended to. The disease, 
however, is of yery common occurrence— 
much more than is generally imagined even 
by medical practitioners—and leads to many 
other derangements—to irritation of the 
lungs—to affections of the urinary organs 
