sequence is it to me whether it be likely to rain, or not to rain? Or whether the dew be remaining on the grass, or have left it? Shall I place these things, or fifty others, of equal importance, which occur every day, in competition with the peace and happiness of the man I love? If I were selfish, I would say, with my own peace and happiness, for there can be neither where there is strife. And am I not amply repaid for these trifling sacrifices by the affection of my husband ?” "It may be so. But there are affairs of importance, in which the opinion of a woman of your understanding ought to have some weight." "In such I give my opinion freely; and it has its weight; if objections are made, I answer them; but, having done so, I end with, As you please,' or 'You may be right.' And I speak conscientiously; for my husband ought to decide: and, where one of us must be mistaken, how can I be certain that it is not myself?" "But this doctrine of passive obedience conceals your intellectual powers, and renders you a tame, uninteresting associate for your husband. Why not infuse a little spirit into your conversation with a man of sense ?" || "Because such a spirit would introduce the spirit of contradiction. This man of sense is perfectly acquainted with my powers of conversation, such as they are; and he does not value them the less for their not being exercised in opposition to himself." "And what would be the event if Mr. Morland should have a wife who would retaliate ?” "She would not be beloved as I am." My cousin Elizabeth is a very odd woman; yet, as she considers the affection of her husband as her greatest earthly good, I am not certain that she is wrong. During my stay at Pendlerock Hall, Mr. Morland was continually contradicting her; yet he would help her, at dinner, to what she liked best, and never failed to offer her more; if he fancied she had too much, or too little, air, he would shut or open a window, before she was aware of the inconvenience herself: if he saw a cloud approaching, he would hasten into the park, or the garden, if she chanced to be there, with an umbrella under his arm: and I began to think it possible that he might not have loved her more if she had || got the better of him in an argument. C. H. MY WEDDING DAY. matched," who pull different ways, who have nothing in common in their pursuits, they either forget their wedding day, or remember-to sigh over it. This is not the case with Julia and me, Mr. Editor; for we keep it as a holy day. We feel the same sentiments of regard for each other as we did on our 66 wedding day"-the day when we were married.-Married! how full of interest is that simple word! -And "when I am married," was once a mighty sentence; and now we date from it all events, as though we had never lived before. Yes, it is my wedding day—my twelfth || Couples who are "paired, and not wedding day. This is perhaps of little moment to you, Mr. Editor, or to many of your readers; and yet the "wedding" day is a very interesting one. To those who are about to marry, what volumes seem to be conveyed in the simple sentence of " my wedding day!" While, to those who have been married long, what pleasurable ideas does it not revive? How do they not dwell on that period when their regard for each other bore such a newness, such a freshness about it! Blissful period, which rarely happens more than once in a man's life, and then only when accompanied with a reciprocity of "The course of true love never does age and feelings. To some, indeed, whose run smooth." Our hopes, as well as those union has only been made up from mere of others, were checked. Mothers have convenience, the wedding day is scarcely flinty hearts, as well as fathers. The to be remembered, perhaps to be noticed chance of choosing well in the marriage only as a black letter day in their almanack. || state is indeed great. The young folk, all not, I believe, sorry to see me as her comforter. The privilege of an old acquaintance allowed me to remain near her. Her brother frowned, and looked big; and his wife, who had been indebted to me for a husband whom she governed, gratefully expressed a cutting surprise that I had arrived. enthusiasm, full of sanguine hopes, doubting nothing, believing every thing; the old ones, cold, avaricious, and calculating. And yet, Julia, we did come together; and if "happy the wooing that is long a-doing,” be an aphorism as true as its opposite is trite, we ought to be very, very happy. I besought, I begged, I promised, I conjured; but Julia's mother was Time flew, and we were married. "Tis inexorable. I was " young, extravagant;" || then my twelfth wedding day. Years, but she could not say profligate. Aye, how have ye fled! My form, how art but I forgive the old lady now. Methinks thou altered! I scarcely even know myI yet see her, standing on a pair of high- self, as I tie my cravat by the lookingheeled shoes, in which no one now could glass. Whence these grey hairs-this walk-herfly-cap and lappets—and, while obesity of form? And Julia, too—her's washing her curious old china jars and is not the slight fragile form I once knew. beakers, sermonizing between each rub. She has become one of that class, of whom Heavens! what stories she would tell of we hear the remark-" Yes, she is rather ruined spendthrifts and deserted wives! good-looking yet; but she was very pretty Then came the brother of Julia, the Sir before she married." Yet Julia is consiOracle of the family. Cupid, shield a lover | derably my junior. from the self-sufficiency and the sarcasms of your elder brother! particularly if the swain belong not to his circle of friends. If not introduced by this Edinburgh Reviewer of interlopers, he will fall out with the cut of his coat, or the tie of his neckcloth. He, too, whispered his doubtsJulia trembled-and I was dismissed. 66 When, as a bachelor, I talked of matrimony, my beau-idéal of a wife was a heroine of romance; and the woman I || married must be tall and elegant, with a Siddonian face, a majesty of step, long taper fingers to sweep the lyre. She must sing Italian, draw, and dance. Alas! Julia is as thick as she is long; and can only strum Sir David Hunter Blair on the piano-forte. But then she reads Sir Walter Scott, Paley, and the last volume of Tremaine. "Heaven is my witness!" exclaimed Julia, you are far from indifferent to me; but dare I brave the opposition of all my friends?" However, let the man who has once gained woman's love, despair Whence come the three brats, that are not; that is, if he continue to deserve her. always, like the grave, crying "Give, In time, his wishes will be realized. Cupid give!" One of them is now 1, 2, and 3-ing was still at work for me; and I was never it on the "music;" another poring over in reality absent from my love. At length, the Delectus; and the last, and indeed the a go-between" interposed; and, "at least, teaching pussy to read under the length," this "go-between" was allowed table. They are my-yes, our children: -but after years had elapsed, letters had and very like other people's children; been returned, and again miniatures ex- notwithstanding the many plans which changed-to give me hope. Julia was, Julia and I have schemed together to it is true, ill, very ill; but I was to restore bring them up so vastly superior to comher. "At length," I obtained permission mon children. They ought to have been once more to visit M. I lost no time, very beautiful; yet even in this I am disafter I awoke out of this dream; but, be-appointed. The girl should have been an fore I could join Julia, her mother had given her consent that I should marry her daughter. It was the last word that the good old lady spoke; and I arrived only to behold her, who had then consented to my happiness-a corpse. Love rarely visits at a death scene; the decorums of life forbid it; yet, in spite of my mal-à-propos appearance, Julia was elegant little engaging sylph; and the boys "not like my friend," but roguish and fubsy, like those of Corregio; or like those in the Infant Academy of Reynolds; instead of which, the hope of our family, designated by his schoolfellows as ugly as Old Harry, is the very image of Papa; and my girl, unlike my Julia, pouts, and has un nez retroussé. It is my twelfth wedding day. Well, || Michaelmas day! I should have been a then, how is this day to be spent? A tailor, to have helped the coincidence; Frenchman would say and do a hundred and a goose we always have. Things are gallant things: an Englishman would never so bad, but they might be worse. only attempt them. How, then, shall I Our friend Horace married on the Ist of spend it? Why, first, then, we will have April. So, then, to our goose; and Julia a goose for dinner.-"A goose! yourself and I will drink each other's health; and you mean!"-Ridiculous and unpoetical! the children shall have a glass of goose"There's always a goose at table when berry wine, of Julia's making; and we I dine here," roared out, one day, Harry will drink your health, Mr. Editor; and Gauntlet, at the St. James's mess. It was hope that, when you marry, you may be never forgotten, nor the peals of laughter as happy as twelve Michaelmas days have it excited. Alas! I was married on a found MEREDITH AND JULIA. NOBODY! "Nobody ask'd you, Sir, she said."Old Ballad. Nor all the redoubted and bedubbed || dawning reason begin to expand, would knights of ancient chivalry, from Amadis de Gaul, to him of the "Woful Countenance," ever performed exploits so Quixotic and extravagant-not the "Man of the Iron Mask," figured ever so marvellously mysterious-not Junius, of jacobinical celebrity, ever shone in such in- || comprehensible invisibility-as the unsubstantial, though not immaterial, subject of this paper! Reader-hast thou never heard of a "Great Unknown ?" I can answer for thee-yes! But aptly, saith Fletcher's wild goose : "What a world's this! Nothing but craft and cozenage." And so it irketh me to add, how that name hath been most grossly plagiarized. Unpretending Nobody is "The Great Unknown." ""Tis true," the works of a Modern Genius, equally in the name of minstrelsie and romaunce, have fully established his just claim to the former portion of the appellation: "'tis pity his subsequent words have shewn how little he is entitled to the whole. He had played the Æneas long enough: he saw the objects of his anxiety safely wafted into the harbour of public opinion, and as warmly received by the Didos of his æra ; "When the cloud gave way, The mists flew upward, and dissolv'd in day." But I digress. The attempt to lay down the precise moment at which the embryo buds of be pronounced absurd; yet we may, with the best semblance of foundation, affirm, that at the first entrance of man into this vile world, his immatured vision can even then distinguish-Nobody; nay more, we may add, that while yet his last breath is struggling for utterance with the gentleman of the large scythe, he is sensible of the presence of Nobody. These premises have been stated, merely to shew that Nobody is a true friend, and to refute Horace's satire, conveyed through the medium of an empty cask, as not in every instance applicable: it being needless to add, that friendship must, in the present case, no less than in others, have connection solely with the mind. Our intimacy, then, with Nobody, will bear to be traced from the cradle to the coffin; and that, not broken off and deviating, but one straight-forward and uninterrupted track from beginning to end. Nobody is constantly in sight, or at hand, at every period of life his pranks in the nursery, the play-ground, or neighbouring orchard, his occasional mischievous displays in the flower-garden, are of too frequent recurrence to need comment here. Has one of the little yellow toast-andwater mugs, inscribed-" a present for a good child," been despoiled of its handle? Nobody did it. Has Sam. Hopewell re -" diffugiunt cadis Cum face siccatis amici."-Lib. i. xxxv. ceived a reciprocal thump from Peter Giles?" Leave me alone, Nobody hit you," is whined out in a drawl which forgets not to give a sonorous twang to the last word. Or, have sister Jessy's japonicas and festoons of nasturtium and hydrangia been decapitated?—Nobody confesses to have done the dastard deed. These little traits seem to have given rise to the generally-received opinion, that any phrenological disciple of Gall and Spurzheim would find the organ of mischievousness very prominent on Nobody's cranium. "Nobody" has lived as many generations as Venetian Cornaro lived years: in comparison with Nobody, the honey-worded Pylian, no less than old English Parr, or Jenkins, seems a short-lived man. Nor be it supposed that from this Methusalehlike term of years a corresponding superiority has not been derived. Has our hero lived longer than others? He has done more, much more, than any.-Who has discovered the long-sought sources of the Nile? Nobody! Who has satisfactorily proved the author of Icon Basilike? Nobody, again!! Who has found the grand secret of alchemy, the philosopher's stone? Again, and again, Nobody !!! It is no doubt the notoriety attendant upon these and similar exploits which gives him unqualified access every where; whether to the tête-à-tête of the lovers, the boudoir of the virgin, the cabinet of the book-worm, or the cell of the hermit— to each of which Nobody is admitted. From the Scotch definition of metaphysics, I may venture fearlessly to assert, that Nobody is a metaphysician. That he is a sound and acute critic is proved by the (often too well founded) alarm which every author entertains that his productions will be read by-Nobody. To give a few of his eccentricities :Nobody reads the Eton Miscellany under the idea that it equals the Etonian, or G. G.'s Microcosm, or the London Magazine under the idea that it excels the Monthly-agrees with Birkbeck, Gilchrist, and the rest of the operatives, in approving the " London University "— When the party wha is spoken to dinna ken what the party wha speaks means, and the party wha speaks dinna ken what he means himsel:that's metaphysics. No. 41.-Vol. VII. censures Peel* as a politician, Wellington as a warrior, or Brougham as a briefbearer-admires Whig principle, Irving's sermons, O'Connell's speeches, or Hume's: arithmetic ;-according to the Morning Post, stays in town during the Christmas holidays, and continues to make his purchases at the Soho Bazaar, since the establishment of Howell and James in Regent Street: and it has been whispered that Nobody entertains a better opinion of Mr. Jeffrey, Doctor Hohenlohe, Mr. Alaric Antony Watts, and the Indian Juggler, than they do of themselves. Without dread of controversy, I might venture to affirm, that misanthropists love || him, philanthropists and resurrection-men hate him, heroes fear him, and critics respect him. Ask Timon whom he loved, Howard whom he hated, Nelson and Wellington whom they feared, and all the anonymous periodical reviewers whom they spared? The answer to the several inquiries will be-" Nobody." Reference needs not be made to Drs. Carpue and Brooks to learn that No-body is the ruin of the resurrection-man; or to any Bardolph proboscised Boniface to declare how incessantly he is put to the blush (if blush he may) by the accusation of some lipsmacking varlet-"There is no body in your wine." The whole drift and tenour of Swift's "Advice to Servants" may, I imagine, be comprised in five words"Treat your masters as Nobody." Moreover, from the peculiar and marked emphasis with which the Mæonian bard dwells on the loss of the giant Cyclops' eye, we are forced to the alternative of supposing that Homer and his countrymen were impressed with a becoming || sense of Nobody's abilities; or, in concurrence with the Calibant of literature (as Sam Foote called him) setting the poet down as an arrant cheat and pickpocket. Our decision, however, will not be difficult to dispose of the latter question—we have not received from tradition, that the Attic tailors manufactured any. pockets to pick: nor, because the poet himself mentions that Helen presented Telemachus with a fine veil, or that the latter's mother derived notoriety from her I have been told, gentle reader, that I agree in politics with-Nobody. + Dr. Johnson. 2 F || everlasting bit of tapestry, are we war- Sir William Curtis, and the Swiss giantess. ranted in affirming that they ever hemmed If again, I should be asked for his nearest a pocket-handkerchief. And even allow- representative within my own knowledge, ing both to be possible, the blindness of I should cite a certain "Ambrose Claude the bard would have done away with the Seurat;" Gallicè, yclept the "Anatomie necessity of a Greek Sir Richard Birnie, || Vivante,” which fleshless bag of bones was as well as the individual application of on view in Piccadilly a year or two since. the lexicographer's sarcasm. Again, in But it is now time to "set down my support of the former (though the dis- burden," like Orlando in the play; and parity between a Nobody and a giant is happy shall I be if I verify Dr. Johnson's undoubtedly great) it is an axiom that remark, on being told by his historian impossibilities are effected by Nobody. || Boswell, that a great gap would be ocIn a word, let a thing be done in the very casioned in society by the death of suchbest manner, which cannot possibly ad- and-such an eminent person: "Pshaw, mit of improvement-Nobody can do it || Sir, Nobody is missed."—I therefore conbetter. If old Pliny were now alive to tent myself with informing my patient read this, he might be excused, if he peruser, that the present paradoxical blushed at his quondam surprise that effusion was originated in an incident, Cæsar could at the same moment employ which took place at a literary symposium his mind to dictate, his ears to listen, his (in the vicinity of Grub Street). Who eyes to read, and his hand to write; for, as will venture to contribute a paper to LA a sweeping clause, I declare, that No- BELLE ASSEMBLEE? inquired the chairman. body is at once, knight-errant, essayist,|| A general silence ensued. It was at patriarch, traveller, alchemist, metaphy-length broken by a sigh from "him of the sician, critic, politician, Prince Hohenlohe, and Paul Pry, in which several capacities he is glanced at in the present narration. As to Nobody's personal identity, it could only be furnished by contrast; for instance, of defuncts, Dr. Johnson, Daniel Lambert, and Charles James Fox, might be adduced: at the present time, I know of no better illustrations than the Lords Nugent and Kensington, presidency," and a half-stifled exclamation of " Nobody." And Nobody accordingly has. And now take I my leave, in the humble expectation that this incorporate trifle will be displeasing toNobody. If, however, to the contrary, I can but console myself with the strain of laughter-stirring Joey :- "I care for Nobody-Nobody cares for me.” J. F. LONDON FORTY YEARS AGO. THE author of the Chronicles of London Bridge* commences his erudite performance with this remark:-" So numerous are the alterations and modernisms in almost every street of this huge metropolis, that I verily believe, the conservators of our goodly city are trying the strength of a London antiquary's heart; and, by their continual spoliations, endeavouring to ascertain whether it be really made of 'penetrable stuff. For my own part, if they continue thus improving, I must even give up the ghost; since, in a little time, there will not be a spot left, where any feature of age will carry back my re• Vide LA BELLE ASSEMBLEE, vol. vi. page 177. || membrance to its ancient original. What with pullings-down, and buildings-up; the turning of land into canals, and covering over old water-ways with new paved streets; erecting pert plaster fronts to some venerable old edifices, and utterly abolishing others from off the face of the earth; London but too truly resembles the celebrated keep-sake knife of the sailor, which, for its better preservation, had been twice re-bladed, and was once treated with a new handle." Certainly there is nothing so powerful as contrast. Let memory contrast many portions of the west end of London as they now appear, with what they were ten years ago, and then let it be asked whether in the |