profligate in his conduct and careless of their interests, unalienable power over the persons of his children, yet the law of opinion always exacts certain dues, which, if not acceeded to in truth, must be evaded by falsehood.

"Accordingly, his first pretext was, that he could not leave his children with her until he knew where she intended to live.

"Of course, had he really cared for his children, the person they were with, and not the place they were in, would have been the source of his anxiety; but, being a thorough-going Whig, place was naturally his only object. When informed of his wife's intended residence, he expressed himself perfectly satisfied, and said he thought it a very good place, and that he had no objection.

"Here, then, every one would have supposed the matter ended, and she was to have her children; but no-next followed a set of frivolous vexations, and impossible-to-accede-to stipulations, which werethat if he allowed them to remain with her, she must never go out anywhere, as she had gone out more than he approved of in Wales, and had not devoted herself sufficiently, according to his notions, to her children. This from such a father, to such a mother, was a little too much. The next stipulation was, that she must neither live in lodgings, nor at an hotel, nor in the house with anybody else. Now this latter stipulation he knew to be impossible; for from the miserable pittance he allowed her, while spending thousands on his own vices, had it not been for the kindness of friends, who permitted her to live with them, she could not have lived at all according to her sphere of life.

"This last piece of petty tyranny-even the attorney who, in the first instance, had so mismanaged the business and played so completely into the husband's hands, advised her by no means to submit to. Nor did she-for well she knew that, arbitrary and degrading as the terms were, had she complied with them to the letter, it would not have prevented his exercising the brutal but legal power of taking them from her at a moment's warning; consequently she steadily and indignantly refused to do so.

"After some time, she wrote an imploring letter to him, entreating him not to crown all her other inju

ries, by persisting in this most cruel and insupportable of all, and begging him to remember, that a time must come when the reflection of not having done all the wrong in his power, would be a source of far greater satisfaction to him than the remembrance of all his triumphs, whether merited or the reverse.

"To this, his only reply was a letter of the most brutal upbraiding; this was an autograph, but was soon followed by one from a low attorney, who was in the habit of chicaning him through his elections, stating that her husband would allow her children to be within ten miles of her, and that she might have free access to them, provided she would give a solemn promise never to attempt to remove them, and a written document expressing her gratitude for his consideration of her feelings evinced in this arrangement. It is needless to say that this was also rejected with scorn, excited to madness by thus having every injury cemented with insult. Upon hearing that he solemnly denied ever having personally ill-used her, she wrote to his mother, (who had first investigated, and then screened him through every stage of his misconduct,) because upon one occasion of greater outrage than usual, she had gone to that unprincipled mother; and in that letter she taxed him with the falsehood of his assertion, and told her that as she wanted nothing from her-for that she would rather beg her own and her children's bread, than owe it to her--she could venture to tell her the truth.

"This was of course made an additional handle against her; and her jesuitical husband gained fresh ground and applause among his own clique, by giving out that he could not allow his children to remain with a woman who had insulted his mother; though in reality the children were taken six months before that letter was written: but then the mother was rich, and he has beggared his wife; and besides, as he justly observes, she has neither father nor brother. But this is a well-judging world—for it always concludes that might is right. And now behold this once-devoted, all-enduring, and over-generous wife, guiltless of all, save having 'loved not wisely, but too well.' With her heart torn up by the roots, when her children were torn from her, and with them of course the last lingering feeling she might have had for their fatherdeprived of her position in society, and cast unpro

tected and unprovided for according to her rank in life, upon the world-obliged to write, in order to provide the common comforts she had been accustomed to; and if she sometimes subsides into calm, every feeling is harrowed up by receiving a dun for some bill of her husband's mistress, who not only has usurped her home, but her name. What wonder, then, that her pen is sometimes dipped in gall? Yet, the world, who never troubles itself about the truth of anything, is always ready to exclaim, (especially those virtuous ladies, who while they are dishonouring their indulgent lords, never perform a single wifely duty,) how very wrong of a wife ever to write at her husband; though the better and more respectable portion of society wonder at nothing, when they know the provocation; besides, the reaction of so much forbearance is always in extremes, just as the sweetest wine makes the sharpest vinegar; but women being considered by men as nonentities in the scale of creation, are not allowed to have, or at least to express, any feelings of indignation, let them have sustained what injuries and outrages they may; whereas, were a tinker or a chimney-sweep wronged but a hair's breadth by his fellow man, and that man were a monarch, could the former get up a revolution to avenge his quarrel, he may chance to take the monarch's place, and at all events descends a readymade hero to posterity; but wo betide the woman who has

"The will to do, the soul to dare,

The sparkling glance soon blown to fire
Of ardent love, or headlong ire;'

unless, indeed, she has been the heroine of a disgraceful and disgusting trial, and is the tool of a political faction-then her profligacy and its triumphs may attain to masculine immunities, and a political party may be organized to force her again upon society, even against the ordinary rules of its Tartuffe code, which has adopted for its principle

'Pécher en secret n'est pas pécher,

Ce, n'est que l'eclât qui fait le crime;'

But if she be only 'sinned against,' not sinning, it is thought particularly shocking if she does not submit to every speices of tyranny, insult, and injustice without a murmur; and for half the women in the world

who are content to attain their petty and ignoble ends, by low cunning and small craft, silent submission is a sort of Fortunatus's cap; but I, who believe intellect to be epicine, also believe that these women, who, like Coriolanus, have natures

too noble for the world;

That would not flatter Neptune for his trident,

Or Jove for his power to thunder.

Their heart's their mouth : What their breast forges, that their tongue must vent; And being angry do forget that ever

They heard the name of death.'

"If it be true, and that it is, I for one have no doubt, 'Que tout les beaux pensées vien du cœur,' it must be from the heart that esteem proceeds, and therefore mere intellectual pre-eminence, unpoised by the ballast of moral excellence, can never command it. It is easy for the world, who view the phantasmagoria of life as they do that of a magic lantern, looking merely to the delusive effects produced by certain ugly and invisible machinery, to be dazzled and deceived by brilliant talents; but the poor drudges condemned to the care and display of the fantoccini may not be quite so charmed; and that country must be an immoral one, where the mirage of a man's public life is allowed to cast a sanctifying vapour over the plague-spots of his private character, which is treated as an Eleusinian mystery, and seems to be defended by the all-powerful μvornoia, that threatens nothing short of death, or divine vengeance, if revealed. As a case in point, the husband I have been telling you about, made his debut as a father, by turning his first child out of the house the moment it was born, saying that he would not have his wife's time and affection monopolized by any d- -d child. Yet, this very man gets up upon a hustings and speaking of the poor laws, makes the following beautiful and benevolent peroration:

"And above all I am opposed to that peculiar vice in the present system, which, contrary to all the nearest and dearest ties of nature, and the honest rights of humanity, would separate a man, often towards the painful decline of life, from the partner who has shared all his trials, and from the children who have been, perhaps, the solitary sources of comfort and hope, that a long career of labour has enjoyed.' Now the mob who heard this no doubt thought it exquisite,

and that Howard the philanthropist was a Nero to their worthy member; but no one can be surprised that his wife and a few more, who knew les dessous des cartes, smiled with disgust, and thought as Miss Biddy Fudge did about that most amiable of scoundrels Jean Jacques,"

'Alas! that a man of such exquisite notions,

Should send his poor brats to the Foundling, my dear.'

"Julia! it is a similar crisis I dread for you. Fancy yourself rewarded for your years of forbearance and endurance, by having your child torn from you -could you bear it?"

"I answer for you, that you could not; and that the same energy, which now enables you to bear and to conceal, would then excite you to resist and to expose; but my fears outstrip probability. You have a father, and you have brothers; and the case I have alluded to will, I trust, remain as it now is-unique.

Still, vague and sickening apprehensions crowd through my heart, when I think what may be; for a man that indulges in acts of personal violence towards his wife must of necessity have recourse to so many falsehoods, and so much meanness, to retain his position in the world's opinion, that time infallibly obliterates even the shadow of respect which every virtuous woman wishes and tries to feel for her husband, be that husband what he may; and it is this stage of your married life that I dread; for the lady whose history I have just detailed to you I have known these ten years; and no two human beings ever differed more widely from each other, than that woman does now from her former self.

"When first I knew her, she was gay, happy, and confiding; with eyes that seem'd to love whate'er they looked upon.' Now she knows no alternations but despair and frenzy; and the greatest proof of friendship any one could evince towards her, would only make her ask, 'I wonder how soon they'll turn upon me?'

"There is something fearful in the breaking of a woman's heart. Her struggles against fate are so exhausting, yet so fruitless-her hopes of redress so impossible, as well might a poor wretch, laden with irons in a condemned cell, when a prison was on fire, hope or attempt to escape merely by his own crip