vow in pieces-for give me leave to say, that a woman's will is never justi fied by opposing that of her husband, when his claim to her obedience is grounded upon a judicious conviction that his resolve is consistent with her happiness."

Mr. then took up the argument again; and willing, as I conjectured, to turn the more pleasing side of the question to the contemplation of the company, declared that he had been gratified with the evidence of a completely happy woman that very morning, in the instance of a brother curate's wife -She was born to bigher expectations than those which the scanty stipend of her husband permitted her to indulge-and at first so far forgot the duty which she owed to herself, as well as to him, that she disdained all consideration of his condition, and insisted upon many expensive indulgences, to which she persuaded herself she was entitled, by virtue of those circumstances in which she had lived previous to marriage. The husband remonstrated, the wife murmured- My dear Mrs. A————, I cannot afford it.'- Mr. A-, I have always been used to it, and I cannot do without it-What would my poor father say, if he were alive, and saw his daughter, his poor favour ite, reduced to such privations ?'From murmurs she would change her battery to tears and hysterics-and when these failed her, she would try to sap the firmness of his resolution, by telling him, that he did not love her so ardently as he pretended; and then she would call him her dear Mr. Aher good Mr. A

"No! No! I am sure you only did it to try me-my own A can never wish to make his dear Mary unhappy." -Still, however, my friend remained inflexible; and at length, when she found she could not prevail, she would look into her own store of reasons, and being a woman of good sense in the main, she at last suffered her better convictions to have their proper influence-Weaned thus by degrees from the little petulancies of an inconsiderate opposition, she in a short time brought herself to submit at a word to decisions which she was conscious were just, and to surrender anxieties which she knew were unworthy of her as altogether iucompatible with her true felicity-Heaven has lately blessed their union with a lovely infant, and 1 yesterday paid the

lying-in visit; when, as the tears of joy stood in her eye, she thus addressed meAh! Mr. how happy am I now,I feel that Mr. A-has, by his tender, yet firm, resistance to my foolish waywardness, taught me to prize real blessings-1 ought to value them-With this dear object in my lap, I feel myself a new creature-I am no longer the child of caprice and the victim of discontent -I am a mother, and have the double obligation to fulfil, of a beloved wife and a provident parent-in short, my dear Sir, you see me quite an altered woman-I look back upon my former unconformable conduet with shame and contrition-A- was right; his heart was guided by his understanding-which you know is excellent-He was a husband, and he justly pressed the authority of his dictates. As a lover, he woo'd me-as the object of my choice, I married him-but as the partner of my days, he had too strong an interest in my real happiness to suffer me to become my worst enemy, and the unnatural adversary of his fondest hopes.I rejoice now in what I once deploredand there is nothing that I should more lament than to find myself again under the government of a disposition so hostile to our mutual satisfaction as that which made me a murmurer even against my own and his best consolations.Look at this dear babe!-A-says it is the picture of me-God forbid that any likeness should exist in the infant to what I have been-This must be my care-my most earnest concern

and this it shall be-She is to be named after me-and I must take care that my infant Mary shall grow up to be a blessing to us both.-Believe me, my worthy friend, a woman knows not half her worth, until she has learned to despise the foibles and to estimate the virtues of her sex.'

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"I commended her sentiments, and congratulated her upon having made a discovery which could not fail to render her a happy woman- My old associate A————,' said I, ' possesses an excellent heart-he loves you with that affection which is always the purest, because it induces a man to prefer the happiness of her who is the object of his fond regards to his own.-When he began, what you will allow me to term, the wholesome discipline of disappointment, he saw that this was the surest method of preventing greater afflic tions-had he been selfish in his love,

he would have suffered you to go on in your heedless course of inconsideration -but he rightly judged, that as you were to travel with him through that path of life in which you blended your future condition with his own, it was no more than consulting the peace of both, to unite your inclinatious with his It was a short but a painful season of probation; but depend upon it, Mrs. A————, affection in a man is never more genuine than when it can discover, and is anxious to correct, in the object of its attachment, those weaknesses which prevent the nobler qualities of the mind from asserting their due influence over it.-You have, in such conduct, the most convincing proof of your husband's truth of attachment; for the person whom we love, we wish to see in all things amiable -You have yielded to your husband's wish-and in his will you have found the most satisfactory accomplishment of your own.'-I then rose to depart, but did not leave the room before I engaged, in compliance with her request, to stand as godfather to the little Mary. Mr. A accompanied me to the door; and, as he held it open with one hand, he shook mine beartily with the other, and bid me "good morning" in a tone of voice that at once convinced me he felt assured of the sincerity of his wife in all that she had said."

"Well, Mr.," exclaimed the Manager's Lady, who had so recently expressed herself somewhat severely upon the follies of young women who had been perverted by the supposititious accomplishments of a fashionable education, from the real excellencies of female worth, "I must admit that your picture is faithfully drawn-I only wish that more of my untoward sisters could find their own features of corrected feeling portrayed in it. But I have a portrait of rather an opposite nature to present you with, which I do very unfeignedly regret, because I would have my own sex command, in every instance, the truest criterion of its excellence, the respectful esteem of your's. There are indeed many wretches among you men, who in the lawless pursuit of a worthless passion exult in the degradation of a hapless female to the base level of their own corrupt desires-but for the honour of human nature, we will not suppose that, even in the most vicious of your sex,

the virtues of our's have not an overawing power, to which the vilest do not involuntarily submit the dogmata of their libertinism.-There are, I know, some beings, I can scarcely dignify them with the appellation of men, who, ushered into life at an early age, and under the very unpropitious auspices of the most depraved associates, have imbibed an opinion of women in general, only from the lowest and loosest characters among them, whose infamy, indeed, has originated in the iniquitous arts of the worst of your sex. I have thus prefaced the short history which I am about to relate, because it will shew how little a female, and that female a married woman, can depend upon that very will in the instant of danger, which she has asserted as a law of sufficient claim to absolve her from the important duties of a wife and a mother, in the more propitious season of happier opportunities.-Among my husband's college acquaintances, was a very estimable young man, who, after signalizing himself at the University of Oxford, in a way that opened to him the most brilliant prospects of collegiate preferment,—married a hoyden girl, who was the only child of an open-hearted foxhunting farmer of substance in the village of which he was curate.

The girl had been accustomed to consider herself as privileged by the tolerance of those who knew her before marriage, in many actions of self-will which nothing but the apparent ingenuousness of her disposition, could have reconciled to their ideas of feminine propriety-Poor Mhad a spice of the romantic in his composition, and he traced in her wild unrestrained deportment, all the graces of a Dianashe was in short, the very child of nature, which he fondly persuaded himself he could form to his will; and model in all the purity of mind, so as to make her the ornament of her sex, and the delight of his life.-He married her-but as she had never allowed herself to contemplate what were the prudential characteristics of a wife, she of course had left out of her calculation those proprieties which belonged to the condition of a married woman-the natural result of all this, was an improvident carelessness in the management of his household, and a flippant negligence of all those decorums, which are always expected in a clergyman's wife.-Every one who knew him foreboded ill of the

match-but he, blinded by his attach ment to her, saw no defect in her conduct, and actually quarrelled with all bis relations and friends who, feeling for his clerical reputation, ventured to remonstrate with him upon his unbounded indulgence of the capricious whims of his wife.-At length the lady hecame a mother, or rather, she presented him with a child, for, mother, was a word to which she attached no other idea, than the tedious confinement to which it doomed her-naturally affectionate, but, I believe I must add, foolishly fond, he sacrificed all his wiser impressions of right and wrong, to her girlish repugnance at fulfilling the primary duty of a mother, that of suckling her own infant.-As soon as she could escape from her room, she committed all maternal ties to a wet nurse, and entered with renewed delight upon all her former pursuits - the wearisome monotony of the cradle's rock, was exchanged for the rapid gallop of the fleet hunter, and the wailings of her infant were disregarded for the more cheering cry of a pack of fox bounds.-The wretched husband saw and felt in his very soul the misery which awaited him, and yet had not resolution enough to stay the progress of his forebodings. If she vouchsafed to enter the pursery once a day, it was merely to meet the unconscionable wish of her Moody Parson, as she decorously called her husband-and if she now and then descended so low as to leave the stable for the kitchen, and to give directions to the cook, it was only to quiet the slip-slop discontent of her neverend rib!-All this could not last-the hapless M's uxorious slavery, at length became too galling for him quietly to wear the chain of subserviency to such outrages of his domestic anticipations. He ventured to expostulate-she laughed at his remonstrauces, and mimicked the gravity with which they were made— he threatened to break up housekeeping-she coolly replied as you please, Sir, but you will first have the goodness to provide me with a residence suitable to the fortune which I brought you."-" He urged her to consider her infant,she assured him that he was better able to nurse the brat than herself-the altercation increased-and she finished the dispute by ringing for her groom to saddle Gimgrack, and attend her to her father's. He meited, and implored her

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to reflect but for a moment → she bewailed her folly in not having reflected for that moment, before she married a parson Gimgrack was brought to the door, she mounted and rode off full swing for her father's house - on the road she overtook a member of the County hunt-he extolled her riding--she told him whither she was going-be inveighed against the cause, as a barbarous and unfeeling act of despotism on the part of her husband, who, although he had the honor of calling him friend, was by no means the man he took him for"-She agreed in his opinion-assuring him that he had driven her to the step she had taken, by his arbitrary conduct towards herhe deplored the improbability of her ever being happy with such a man-she admitted it-he again deplored it-and thus proceeding in full trot and entire concurrence of sentiment-the interview finished by his promising to call upon her at her father's, and pointing out to him the unavoidable necessity for what she had done-the sequel you will of course anticipate-in a few days before the pretensions of either party could be deliberately decided upon, Mrs. M-, and her fox-hunting friend decamped for the Continent, leaving her husband in a state of distraction, aud a prey to all that self-reproach, which a sensible but irresolute man always feels, when as a husband he finds himself the victim of his own ill-placed confidence and injudicious indulgence. -Had the luckless M.- used his conjugal authority at first, by compelling this child of nature to obey against her will, she would, like other way. ward children, have felt and submitted to the necessity-and as all these pupils of nature are children of habit, he might have formed her mind to the subjugation of duty-and as we are all of us more or less inclined to practice what we have been taught to adopt, she would have gone through the characters of a wife and a mother, at all events, with decent conformity-and this by the mere habit of doing the same thing continually, would have become in time just as satisfactory, as following a fox, or substituting the stable for the nursery.-Your instance Mr., proves that she who can be induced to obey without the will, at first, may in the end be inclined to voluntary obedience

my tale proves, that when once the will of a woman is allowed to act

without constraint, in deviations from consistency of character, it soon asserts a dangerous pre-eminence over duty, and giving the reins to passion, overleaps every boundary of honor and virtue.-I must tell you in addition to my story, that his wife was returned upon M. -'s hands, by her villainous seducer, who sent her home in a coffin about three months after her elopement. It seems, that he could not brook the temper he had so vilely taken advantage of, and had liberally dispensed that chastisement which she deserved, and which he was brute enough to inflict-the miserable woman then, in all the pangs of fruitless remorse, called to mind the tender forbearance of her injured husband, and her cruel desertion of her first bornthat passionate ebullition of spirit with which she had resisted his will, expressed as that will was in the most affectionate expostulation, now sunk powerless beneath the arm of a ruffian adulterershe could not bear the horrible contrast of what she might have been and what she was one night, therefore, when she bad rushed from his merciless grasp in all the anguish of such conflicting thoughts, she threw herself into the Seine, and in suicide, put an end to an existence, which, whilst she lived, she knew not how to value aright, and when she had discovered its real worth in the disappointments of her vicious contempt of it, she threw away in a premature death.

"'Pon honour," cried Captain Otto, stifling a yawn, "You have made out a most melancholy catastrophe-and very amusing I protest. Wha-ha-t do you think of this love story about murder, Mrs. ? I swear it has quite upset my nerves."

"Has it so," said Mrs. ; "Now, from as much as I have heard of it (for faith, Captain, my inclination to yawn was well nigh lost in a sound doze), I think it is by no means so duli a history as you would make it out to he. I should like to have seen how the parson looked when he unpacked his parcel of returned goods."

"Good heavens, Mrs. -," exclaimed Miss G, "how can you talk so!. I declare I cannot conceive the motive for the wretch's sending back the corpse of his wife to Mr. M -:except it was to add insult to injury."

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Why, no," said the manager's wife,

"this was not the villain's motive, as it happened; for, at that time, no Protestant was allowed Christian burial in France; and, although he had not shrunk from debasing the unhappy woman below all that could make life desirable to her, yet he could not endure the thought of her not returning to her natural corruption in a hallowed grave."

Pray, Mr. -,"asked Lady S, by what law of affinity are we to apply these two instances as elucidating my friend's position of the possibility of obeying without the will?"

"The instance which I have adduced," answered Mr., "proves, I think, that where caprice exists without illtemper, the folly of perverse inclinations and unconformable impressions may be prevented by a manly and decided resistance on the part of the husband, accompanied with affectionate remonstrance and earnest expostulation.And hence that obedience to which the will of the wife may at first have reluctantly submitted, may become, in the end, an act of just feeling, both as it relates to duty and to sentiment; to the understanding and the heart. The circumstances of Mrs M's history plainly enough point out the necessity for constraining such a mind as her's by actual coercion of authority; for, had Mr. Mallowed himself to reflect that he was the guardian of his wife's happiness, as well as the judge of his own, he would have seen that. as she felt so little concern about either as to commit both by the most childish extravagancies, it was his duty to use imperative injunction, instead of soothing persuasives, and to exact submission by command if he found it could not be obtained by entreaty."

"Which command, I presume," said Lady S," he ought to have followed up with due chastisement, as it has already been gently hinted."

"Not so, Madam," replied Mr. "believe me I am no advocate for conjugal conflicts of that sort-for it would always be more adviseable that before such a dreadful alternative be resorted to, the less violent, though, perhaps, not less afflictive, should be tried-that of separation; since, if the wife is resolved to quarrel with her own opportunities of being happy, she certainly ought not to be permitted to destroy the peace of a man who, by every anxiety of affectionate indulgence, is