NOTES OP THE MONTH. 87 



more communicative. We wonder at what age the lady was buckled 

 with husband the first — it would have been gratifying also to know, at 

 what particular era of her protracted existence, she engaged at the altar 

 to perform all the duties of wedlock to husband the eighth. As to the 

 respective periods of ths half dozen intervening marriages, we would 

 have made calculations of our own, which would at least have been 

 satisfactory to our own minds. But the rogue who wrote the paragraph, 

 has left us completely in the dark on these points. For a century at 

 least, we may safely assume, this wife of many husbands produced but 

 few of those " little pledges of mutual affection," which are ordinarily 

 looked for with so much anxiety by " a newly-married pair," During 

 that time, there can be little doubt she has been as anti-Malthusian in 

 practice, whatever she may have been in theory, as the most strenuous 

 advocate of that hypothesis could wish. The paragrapher says nothing 

 about her charms. They must have been great to have brought no 

 fewer than eight swains into her arms, while others of the sex are 

 unable to get one. We wonder if her attractions continued to the last ; 

 if they did, we are prepared to shed an additional tear in sympathy with 

 the bereaved husband, now mourning in the anguish of his soul, the 

 death of her in whose arms he was wont to be supremely blest. On 

 talking to husband the last of his predecessors in her affections and arms, 

 we presume she must have done so, as No, 1, No. 2, No. 3, and so on, 

 to prevent any mistake as to the identity of the " dear departeds !" The 

 fact of the deceased having in her time wedded eight husbands, is 

 fraught with an important moral and social lesson — a lesson which must 

 especially commend itself to the female sex. Never was the blessedness 

 of matrimony so forcibly inculcated before. Here is a woman, who for 

 nearly a century and a quarter — assuming, as we think we have every 

 right to do, that she was wedded to No. 1 when in, or only just out of, 

 her teens — here is a woman, who for this long period had experience of 

 the married state, and found it so sweet to her taste, that she died as she 

 had lived, in it. Had she felt it irksome, she had, in her eventful 

 domestic career, several opportunities of escaping for ever from it ; but 

 she found it to be so much the reverse, that as soon as she was thrown 

 out of it, she made all possible haste to get herself reinstated in it. 

 Marriage is said to be a lottery — by which we suppose is meant, the 

 quality of the partner whom one gets. It is a lottery also with young 

 ladies, whether they get a husband at all. The deceased had remarkable 

 luck in the mere article of getting husbands. If she drew prizes — 

 that is, got good husbands — her luck, we are confident, must have been 

 perfectly unprecedented in the annals of matrimony. Seriously speakin"-, 

 we question whether it be just or politic in the laws of Italy to allow 

 one woman to have eight husbands, while so many of the sex are 

 vegetating in celibacy. It were a pity the memory of such a woman 

 should be confined to oblivion : the brief notice which the inditer of the 

 paragraph we have quoted gives of her, will hardly serve to rescue her 

 name from forgetfulness for even one little fortnight. We hope the 

 surviving husband, when the first overwhelming emotions of sorrow 

 have somewhat subsided, will seriously set about writing her biography 

 at full_length ; if we had the necessary matter, we would do it ourselves. 



