ness out of a bear." Her mellifluous voice and sweet-toned harp still retained all their exquifite power of transfusing harmony and delight into her husband's foul, while the early horn or the convivial appointment called him from the syren in vain. But if she fought to lead his attention to the blooming wilderness of sweets planted by her hand, or the scarcely less glowing garland created by her pencil, he instantly recollected fome insurmountable engagement which required every moment of his time. She was equally unfortunate if the attempted to interest him in the history of her colony, as the termed her neat little white village; or if, opening the stores of her capacious mind, she sought to discuss some topic of literary taste, her arguments might be brilliant, but unless they were compressed within the strictest rules of Spartan brevity, her lord lord was either discovering the wit of his spaniel, or had fallen fast asleep. Yet his heart was just to her merits, and his tongue so copious in her praise, that he was sometimes inclined to thrust in the agreeable subject without proper preparation. He was confidered by all who visited at the castle to be a most perfect paragon of connubial merit; and lady Monteith was as universally pronounced to be a happy woman; with which opinion I am inclined to coincide, notwithstanding that the power of Gyges' magic ring, invariably possessed by all novel writers, has enabled me to peep behind the curtain, and to see the corroding forrow which a prudent wife will not only conceal from public observation, but even withhold from the knowledge of her bosom friend. My young female readers, whose notions of nuptial felicity are drawn from the delusive pages of a circulating library, will start at the harsh tenet which seems to affirm, that a great number of married ladies may affign causes for discontent of a severer nature than what sometimes affected the tranquillity of the blooming Geraldine. Fearful left they should suppose my doctrine ambiguous, or imagine that the happiness of the lady was wholly owing to the amiable constitution of her own mind, I will very plainly tell them, that, though causes for vexation occafionally occurred, lasting unhappiness in such a situation could only proceed from a discontented, ill-regulated temper, or a perverted judgment, which, instead of forming an estimate of life as it really, is, erects a fallacious standard, by which it decides upon what is due to its own deserts, and how far others at as they ought. Reverse this last sentence, and let the fair fcrutinizer of her husband's faults contemplate the errors of her own behaviour; let her recollect the duties she has heedlessly omitted, and the provocations she has undesignedly given; and let her then use the experience she derives from self-examination in her estimate of the conduct of her partner. After making some deductions for the stronger temptations to which the other fex are exposed by their more impetuous passions and blunter feelings, that indulgence of their humours which their manners in early youth permit, and their hereditary notions of fuperiority derived from Adam; I say, she will then, perhaps, justly refer the apparent neglect or cruel unkindness which had justextorted her tears, to fomething of business, which " had puddled his clear temper," and sent him home rather with an expectation of having his humours humours foothed by feminine softness, than of offering at the shrine of feminine susceptibility those attentions which fit the bridal state. The sensibility of lady Monteith's disposition prevented her from viewing the defects in her lord with the indif. ference which a mind of common refinement would have experienced. But to the qualities of refinement and sensibility, so generally fatal to female peace, Geraldine united a strong attachment to her husband, natural sweetness of temper, and correct notions of the human character, derived from her early intimacy with Mrs. Evans. The precepts of that excellent monitress, now strengthened by conviction of their propriety, frequently recurred to her mind, prevented her from adopting the language of complaint, opened her eyes to the agreeable part of her situation, |