life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so common I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. But why we, who are not their natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, and incense, our tribute and homage of admiration, I do not see. "Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children:" so says the excellent office in our Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women. "Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them" so say I; but then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us that are weaponless; -let them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows are double-headed: they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the other. As, for instance, where you come into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, if you find them more than usually engaging,—if you are taken with their pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp and play with them, some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending them out of the room: they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. - does not like children. With one or other of these forks the arrow is sure to hit you. have a real character and an essential being of themselves: they are amiable or unamiable per se; I must love or hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly: they stand with me upon their own stock, as much as men and women do. O! but you will say, sure it is an attractive age,—there is something in the tender years of infancy that of itself charms us. That is the very reason why I am more nice about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them; but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another in glory; but a violet should look and smell the daintiest.—I was always rather squeamish in my women and children. But this is not the worst: one must be admitted into their familiarity at least, before they can complain of inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,— if you did not come in on the wife's side,—if you did not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on,-look about you-your tenure is precarious-before a twelvemonth shall roll over your head, you shall find your old friend gradually grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence after the period of his marriage. With some limitations they can endure that: but that the good-man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship in which they were not consulted, though it happened before they knew him,-before they that are now man and wife ever met,-this is intolerable to them. I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love my Every long friendship, every old authentic dog" that is not always so very practicable, intimacy, must be brought into their office to particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease be new stamped with their currency, as a sovyou or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or aereign prince calls in the good old money that lesser thing, any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and anything that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying with their brats if it gives them any pain; but I think it unreasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see no occasion,-to love a whole family, perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately, to love all the pretty dears, because children are so engaging. was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these new mintings. Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and worm you out of their husband's | she had conceived a great desire to be acquainconfidence. Laughing at all you say with a ted with me, but that the sight of me had very kind of wonder, as if you were a queer kind of much disappointed her expectations; for from fellow that said good things, but an oddity, is her husband's representations of me she had one of the ways;—they have a particular kind formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, of stare for the purpose; till at last the hus- officer-like looking man (I use her very words); band, who used to defer to your judgment, the very reverse of which proved to be the and would pass over some excrescences of truth. This was candid; and I had the civilunderstanding and manner for the sake of a ity not to ask her in return how she came to general vein of observation (not quite vulgar) pitch upon a standard of personal accomplishwhich he perceived in you, begins to suspect ments for her husband's friends which differed whether you are not altogether a humourist, so much from his own; for my friend's dimena fellow well enough to have consorted with in sions as near as possible approximate to mine; his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to he standing five feet in his shoes, in which I be introduced to ladies. This may be called have the advantage of him by about half an the staring way; and is that which has often- inch; and he no more than myself exhibiting est been put in practice against me. any indications of a martial character in his air or countenance. Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony: that is, where they find you an object of especial regard with their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attachment founded on esteem which he has conceived towards you; by never-qualified exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the good-man, who understands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so much candour, and by relaxing a little on his part, and taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to that kindly level of moderate esteem,—that “decent affection and complacent kindness" towards you, where she herself can join in sympathy with him without much stretch and violence to her sincerity. Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for something excellent in your moral character was that which rivetted the chain which she is to break, upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation she will cry, "I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr. as a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed charm in your conversation that he first grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the first notice of any of these she as readily exclaims, "This, my dear, is your good Mr.." One good lady, whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for not show ing me quite so much respect as I thought due to her husband's old friend, had the candour to confess to me that she had often heard Mr. speak of me before marriage, and that did These are some of the mortifications which I have encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavour: I shall therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of which married ladies are guilty,-of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice versa. I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. not come home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was reversing the point of good manners; for ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest behaviour and decorum; therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great good-will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise to record the full-length English of their names, to the terror of all such desperate offenders in future. AN IRISH PEASANT'S HOME. Jack Doran's cottage, from a bare hillside, Where some few ridges broke the swarthy soil, There Jack and Maureen, Neal their only son, For Sunday mornings and cold weather, tea; 1 From Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland, or the New Landlord, a poem in twelve chapters (Macmillan & Co.) In his preface to a new edition (1869) Mr. Allingham says: "Seven centuries are nearly finished since the political connection began between England and Ireland; and yet Ireland remains to this hour not a well-known country to the general British public. To do something, however small, towards making it better understood, is the aim of this little book." He adds that since the poem "first appeared in Frazer's Magazine, the aspect of Irish affairs has changed in several particulars," and refers, with satisfaction, to the increased attention given to them by Parliament. And round the cottage an oasis green That each good spot among the heather knew, At thought whereof were bumpkins fain to cast Who at an evening dance more blithe than she? With steps and changes, modest in their glee, stature Graceful arose, and strong, to middle height, With fair round arms, and footstep free and light; She was not showy, she was always neat, The girl was rich, in health, good temper, beauty, Work to be done, amusement after duty, A decent father, a religious mother, 2 Kemp, a meeting of girls for sewing, spinning, or other work, ending with a dance. Kayley, a casual gathering of neighbours for gossip. More could she ask for? grief and care not yet, Youth's joyous landscape round her footsteps lay, Jack and his wife, through earlier wedded Untroubled with far-sighted hopes and fears, Of house and farm, of bargain and of pray'r; The two themselves could neither write nor read, When manly, godly counsels took the rule, Nor would, for love or money, grant a site), Amaze from print their parents' simple wit, To help a headache, or a cow fall'n dry; And robb'd the churning by their May-day spell; Was stored to light a sick-bed. For the rest, Jack was a plodding man, who deem'd it best His knotted fingers, like rude wooden pegs, Fond, of a night, to calmly sit and smoke, In patient combat with a barren soil, And peep'd through loopholes from his narrow Young herd and spadesman at his father's back, bound. With every hardship sturdily he strove, To fair or distant ship fat cattle drove, Contriving days and odd half-days to snatch, And crown'd the cut-out bog with many a sheaf Resolved to grant no other petty lease, The bailiff, when he called it "snug," spoke true. The patch'd, unpainted, but substantial door, A decent hat, a wife's good shawl or gown Rude be your fence and field—if trig and trim A silent stealthy penny, is the plan Judged to have thieved a pittance from the soil. But close in reach of Bridget's busy hand And Neal, despite his father's sense of guilt, The peasant draws a low and toilsome lot; His glance, by oversubtleties unblurr'd, sound sleeps; Their day, within a settled course begun, Brings wholesome task, advancing with the sun, The sure result with satisfaction sees, And fills with calm a well-earn'd hour of ease. Nay, gold, whose mere possession less avails, Far-glittering, decks the world with fairy-tales. Who grasp at poison, trigger, cord, or knife?— Seldom the poorest peasant tires of life. Mark the great evil of a low estate; Not Poverty, but Slavery,-one man's fate Too much at mercy of another's will. Doran has prosper'd, but is trembling still. Our Agent's lightest word his heart can shake, The Bailiff's bushy eyebrow bids him quake. LUCY. She dwelt among the untrodden ways A maid whom there were none to praise, A violet by a mossy stone She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me! WORDSWORTH. |