the first homely-featured or plain-dressed young woman of his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome or rich enough for him, and he could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access and opportunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it.  The young woman understands this as clearly as if it were put into words; but no reasonable young woman would think of making this the ground of a quarrel.  Just as little right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man,—­the lady’s choice.  It is enough that I know I am not:  I do not want this perpetual reminding.

The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made sufficiently mortifying; but these admit of a palliative.  The knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may accidentally improve me; and in the rich man’s houses and pictures,—­his parks and gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at least.  But the display of married happiness has none of these palliatives:  it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, unqualified insult.

Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort.  It is the cunning of most possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as possible, that their less favoured neighbours, seeing little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to question the right.  But these married monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces.

Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-married couple, in that of the lady particularly:  it tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this world:  that you can have no hopes of her.  It is true, I have none; nor wishes either, perhaps:  but this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted, not expressed.  The excessive airs which those people give themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be more offensive if they were less irrational.  We will allow them to understand the mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we who have not had the happiness to be made free of the company:  but their arrogance is not content within these limits.  If a single person presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most indifferent subject, he is immediately silenced as an incompetent person.  Nay, a young married lady of my acquaintance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her condition above a fortnight before, in a question on which I had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the properest mode of breeding oysters for the London market, had the assurance to ask with a sneer, how such an old Bachelor as I could pretend to know any thing about such matters.