Gun recoils and gives a shock, Walk some miles, and make a pother, Now you reach your own fire side, HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE. MONEY V. Love. THIS case was opened by a junior barrister, who stated that this was an action brought for defamation, which was contained in these words, spoken by the defendant: “A marriage contracted for money can never bring happiness;" to which the defendant had pleaded a justification whereupon issue had been joined. Counsellor Twister then arose, and spoke nearly as follows: "Gentlemen of the jury, this is a case in which, I own, I have the declared opinion of many men to contend with. But was their opinion given with sincerity? had they no secret wish to gain the applause, the confidence, or, perhaps, the trust of mankind, by making themselves appear despisers of worldly riches, because probably, like the fox and the grapes, it was out of their power to possess them? or did they never, when an opportunity offered, by a wealthy marriage, tacitly confess their former opinion to have been erroneous? Gold is so strong, yet so pleasing an argument, that none can resist it. For gold, statesmen sell their country, thousands risk their lives, and half the world toils from morn till night; how many thousands are made unhappy by the want of it, and how few by the want of love. Yet the world abounds with hypocrites, who pretend to despise it; and who, at the very time when they will sell even their very souls to obtain it, will say A marriage contracted for money can never bring happiness." And it should be remembered, gentlemen, that they assert this, in direct defiance of the laws, the laws of nature 1 mean, and are not the laws of nature the laws of God, of which self preservation is the first: for instance, does not money preserve life by procuring all its necessaries; does it not preseve us from all the horrors of a prison; and, in fact, from all the many evils that life is subject to; or, at least, if properly applied, from most of them? As for happiness in love, like the Philosopher's stone, we may talk of and try to possess it, but all our efforts will be baffled; the wisest man had sought it in the smiles of hundreds of the most beautiful, when he declared, all was vanity; if love, therefore, with the command of riches, and the.. rule of power, cannot bring happiness, how can love alone? During courtship, both parties conceal their disposition, under such animpenetrable disguise, that marriage, in that respect, becomes a mere lottery, and a lottery. too where the prizes, I am sorry to say, are in: no wise proportionate to the blanks. When a marriage is formed for love alone, satiety with disgust will, most probably, follow; but how different when money is the object of your affections, for from that they will never swerve: and suppose you should have the mis fortune to marry a virago, surely it is better to put up with that misfortune, or to grieve for it at your ease, than to grieve and labour at the same time, as you would, very probably, be obliged to do, if love had been the object of your union. And what is this love, which, I am told, sits upon the heart as heavy as the night-mare? it is a thing that exists only in fancy, an ignis fatuus, which at the very mos ment of your grasping, vanishes away to tor ment you again. And beauty too, which, I suppose, is the quagmire about which this va pour dances, decreases hourly and hourly, until, in a very few years, that form, once so lovely, once so beloved, is totally changed, totally different, and yet the knot of marriage is as fast as ever. But gold, dear gold, on the contrary, vanishes only by the folly of the possessor: the endearing charms of gold always continue; and time, with long acquaintance, only serve to strengthen our affection for them. Is it not almost impossible for two persons to be equally pleased with each other, or contiuue so for any length of time, unless gold is the north pole that their affections point to: to that their constancy will always remain. Put the case to yourselves, gentlemen, consider if any of you had a wife with an annuity for her own life, say 1,0001. a year, with what anxious care you would watch over her health, with what solicitude you would inquire her wishes, with the hope that by making her happy, you should prolong that life, the loss of which would make your own miserable, I may perhaps say for ever. I will not occupy your time, gentlemen, by enlarging on the virtues, or expatiating on the power of gold, though like the force of thunder, none can resist it. The damage sus tained by my client I can fully prove, and I hope, and think, gentlemen, that I have already advanced arguments sufficient to entitle him to your verdict. Miss Dorcas Doubleage was then called, and swore that her fortune was 19,6607. that her marriage with the plaintiff had been agreed upon, but that she had refused to have him, upon hearing the defendant say "A marriage contracted for money could never bring happiness." Counsellor Flamwell replied, to the following effect: Gentlemen, it is with the utmost pleasure that I address you, because being fully convinced, not only of the justness of my case, but likewise of the uprightness of a British jury,-uprightness which is impossible to be shaken by the venal flattery or shallow arguments of my learned brother; I am fully aware I shall be finally honoured with your unanimous verdict. If you will allow me, gentlemen, so far to trespass on your valuable time, I will in a few minutes prove to your satisfaction the fallacy of the arguments you have just been listening to. You will observe, gentlemen, that my learned brother opens his speech by candidly confessing the opinion of many men to be against him, and then, like the mad man, because the world does not think as he thinks, he calumniates all mankind by pretending to doubt the honesty of every body-this is doing business by wholesale. He next talks in a pompous style of men risking their lives, selling their souls, their country, and, in fact, doing every thing that is infamous, for gold, which my learned brother would persuade us is some powerful deity, worshipped by every one; it may be the god that he adores, but, heaven be praised, it is not mine, and I am very well persuaded, gentlemen, that it can never be yours, for you are men of a liberal mind, far above such sordid influence. But let us suppose it is all true what he says, and that, melancholy to relate, man in his frailty will, for the sake of gold, commit the vilest act in nature; what does it serve to prove Why, nothing more than the unbounded evil of that gold. My learned brother then quibbles about the law of the subject; which, I dare say, he thought a most excellent piece of logic, and as I, gentlemen, do not wish to put him out of conceit with himself, I shall not pretend to confute it; for I am sure sophistry like this will never convince such a jury as I have now the honour of addressing. In the next place, gentlemen, to shew the versality of his genius, he discourses of the lottery; and when tired of that subject, he talks of marrying a shrew, and of the consequences attending it; after he has amused himself sufficiently therewith, he draws our attention to the ignis fatuus, and from thence to the charms of gold, and so on for an hour longer. But as I am well convinced that all the arguments of his truly fertile invention could never. make you believe that gold is the summum honum of earthly happiness, or that love is Empromptus. TO A YOUNG LADY, H. C. L. With a present of a Pocket Book. THIS little book for one short year caress'd At twelve months' end is thrown neglected by, And doom'd to perish in obscurity. At twelve months' end resigns its place and pow'r, Nor longer marks the secret spot and hour IN the reign of William the Third there lived in Ipswich, in Suffolk, a family which, from the number of peculiarities belonging to it, was distinguished by the name of the ODD FAMILY. Every event remarkably good or bad, happened to this family in an odd day of the month, and every one of them had something odd in his or her person, manner, and behaviour: the very letters in their christian names always happened to be of an odd number. The husband's name was Peter, and the wife's Rahab; they had seven children, all boys, viz. Solomon, Roger, James, Matthew, Jonas, * Melpomene. David, and Ezekiel. The husband had Solomon was born blind of the left eye, and but one leg, and his wife but one arm. Roger lost his right eye by accident; James had his left ear pulled off by a boy in a quarrel, and Matthew was born with only three fingers on his right hand; Jonas had a stump foot, and David was humpbacked; all these, except David, were remarkably short, and Ezekiel was six feet two inches high at the age of nineteen; the stumpfooted Jonas, and the humpbacked David got wives of fortune, but no girl would listen to the addresses of the rest. The husband's hair was as black as jet, and the wife's remarkably white, yet every one of the children's were red. The husband had the peculiar misfortune of falling into a deep sawpit, where he was starved to death, kind of sustenance, died in five days after in the year 1701, and the wife, refusing all him. In the year 1708, Ezekiel enlisted as a grenadier, and although he was afterwards wounded in twenty-three places, he recovered.-Roger, James, Matthew, Jonas, and David, died at different places on the same day, 1718, and Solomon and Ezekiel were in the year 1723. drowned together in crossing the Thames, When Copley summ'd up all he'd proved had been done, Twas almost a total eclipse of the sun; ANTIQUITIES. THERE is now standing at Rhuddlan, part of the wall of the house wherein Edward I. held his parliament, after complet ing the subjugation of Wales, a conquest which it had required eight hundred years o effect. The old wall has been built upon, and metamorphosed into the gable end of a ow of small houses, so that to a passenger, here is nothing particularly antique or triking in its appearance; but the Very Rev. the Dean of St. Asaph, in order to escue this piece of antiquity from oblivion, is caused to be placed upon it a tablet earing the following inscription: This Fragment Is the remains of the Building "Pardon me, my friend," said Eumenes, "I spoke, at the moment, with the silly pride of a disappointed man-at least, so it must have appeared to you. But, believe me, I meant no misanthrophic reflections-I doubt not, that your happier lot combines all those advantages." 66 "Of that yourself shall judge, Eumenes," replied the judge; " for that lot you must consent, henceforth, to share, or it will lose all its advantages to me. I will introduce your wife to my Leonora, your children to mine; they shall renew the friendship of their father's -perhaps cement it by still closer ties!" In this warmth," returned Eumenes, “I recognise my own Lysander-but you shall hear my story! 5rin I which was passed the Statute of Rhuddlan, To the Principality of Wales "You may remember that, at Cambridge, I felt a strong bent for the study of physic; and at the very time that you devoted yourself to jurisprudence, I was attending medical lectures, and amusing my leisure hours with poetry. When we separated, on leaving Cambridge, we lost sight of each other; not, I am persuaded, from any abatement of attachment on either side, but from the difference of our another at Leyden; and having obtained a pursuits. I spent one year at Edinburgh, and sufficient stock of medical knowledge, I fixed myself in a distant_town, having first taken out my diploma. I found it difficult to sub- sist; for the situation of the town was healthy, and the apothecary of the place had, from time immemorial, been in possession of the title of Doctor. Either nobody was sick, or nobody chose to send for me; and my patrimony had been very much lessened, in the pursuit of medical education. "This deficiency I made no doubt of speedily supplying, when I began to practice; for I was conscious of knowledge, and I had never been reckoned deficient in benevolence. To amuse my leisure hours, of which I had enough, I wrote verses; but the inhabitants of this town had no turn for verses, and I détermined to change my quarters. I removed to another, and succeeded a physician of some eminence, in a great part of his practice. Fees now flowed in with tolerable rapidity. I was also courted as a companion, and Felicia perused my verses with pleasure.-They even made me an interest in her heart; and a lingering hectic complaint, of which I had the happiness to cure her, endeared us both to each other. "Felicia's father was rich, but I was getting into very good practice. Unfortunately, the old gentleman wished some more time to elapse before he gave me his daughter. I told him he own, I should be less able to attend to busiwas wrong; for that till I could call her my ness. The truth of this reasoning availed nothing with the obstinate old man, and I lost my time and my practice. I was no longer thought worthy of the hand of Felicia, and it was disposed of to a dealer in sugar. Enraged with Felicia, her father, and physic, I gave up my thoughts wholly to the Muses, and produced a play. There was no theatre, and I resolved to publish it. While it was in the press, I was once more called in to a patient. This was a crabbed old woman, who had a lovely niece. Now the bright eyes of this certain Emilia soon obliterated all the traces Felicia had left in my heart, and the obstinacy of the old lady's complaint gave me time to obtain a share of her favour. At length the old aunt recovered, and Emilia very conveniently fell sick. My visits, there. fore, continued; but the watchful old maid perceived the purpose of my heart, and Emilia was consigned to the care of the apothecary, an old man of sixty, and father of a numerous family. I made my proposals in form, and was told that Emilia's hand was destined for a cousin of her's, then in India; and that if it were not, it should never be given to a poet. "Emilia liked this arrangement no better than I did; and as she could not conceive that she owed implicit obedience to this old aunt, with whom she had not resided above a twelvemonth, and as she knew nothing very favour. able of the cousin in India, she agreed to disappoint the old lady's schemes, and give her self to me. As she was two and twenty, and her little fortune not under any restrictions, this was attended with no difficulty, and Emilia became my wife. The old lady's vengeance, however, deprived me of many of my patients many more objected to a writing doctor; and a circumstance, in which the preference was given to an ignorant young man who had neither studied at Edinburgh nor at Leyden, disgusted me with physic. About this time an uncle of mine died, and left me five thousand pounds. We cal. culated on our future mode of life, and found that the interest of our money would enable us to live without the assistance of medicine. We took a small house in a beautiful village, deposited our fortune in a capital mercantile house; and for many years enjoyed all the comforts of leisure and independence. We brought up our girls to suit any station, and I have two boys fighting for their country. Our income, which some fortunate circumstances had increased, was regularly remitted to us by my mercantile friend; but about four years ago the house broke, and we were involved in the ruin! "Sick of the world, we retired hither, grieved only for our children, who, however, support the demolition of all their more brilliant prospects with dutiful resignation. For my part," continued Eumenes, "I am satisfied for myself!-I have not long to live; disappointment and uneasiness have preyed on my health, and a few months will terminate my life. My wife and my children might perhaps live to thank the friendship of Lysander-" "And they may depend on it!" exclaimed Lysander. Nor did he break his promise Poor Eumenes was indeed soon after consigned to the grave, ending, in obscurity, a life whose morning promised more unclouded sunshine, The widow and orphans were removed to Lysander's house; where a more intimate con nection took place between the children than had ever subsisted between the parents; and Lysander joyfully became the father of two of the daughters of Eumenes. Not always do those who set out in life with equal prospects, enjoy the same good fortune! Nor does prosperity universally harden, or adversity uniformly sour the human heart. A FAMILIAR STORY. IT was a winter morning. I had turned Dike one who must endure the sharp neglects |