are Wind-bound.  When I ask him whether it rains, he makes Answer, It is no Matter, so that it be fair Weather within Doors.  In short, Sir, I cannot speak my Mind freely to him, but I either swell or rage, or do something that is not fit for a civil Woman to hear.  Pray, Mr.  SPECTATOR, since you are so sharp upon other Women, let us know what Materials your Wife is made of, if you have one.  I suppose you would make us a Parcel of poor-spirited tame insipid Creatures; but, Sir, I would have you to know, we have as good Passions in us as your self, and that a Woman was never designed to be a Milk-Sop.

  MARTHA TEMPEST.

L.

[Footnote 1:  Odes, I. 16. ]

[Footnote 2:  In the Timaeus Plato derives woman and all the animals from man, by successive degradations.  Cowardly or unjust men are born again as women.  Light, airy, and superficial men, who carried their minds aloft without the use of reason, are the materials for making birds, the hair being transmuted into feathers and wings.  From men wholly without philosophy, who never looked heavenward, the more brutal land animals are derived, losing the round form of the cranium by the slackening and stopping of the rotations of the encephalic soul.  Feet are given to these according to the degree of their stupidity, to multiply approximations to the earth; and the dullest become reptiles who drag the whole length of their bodies on the ground.  Out of the very stupidest of men come those animals which are not judged worthy to live at all upon earth and breathe this air, these men become fishes, and the creatures who breathe nothing but turbid water, fixed at the lowest depths and almost motionless, among the mud.  By such transitions, he says, the different races of animals passed originally and still pass into each other.]

[Footnote 3:  In the Epilogue to Love for Love.]

[Footnote 4:  that his]

* * * * *

No. 212.  Friday, November 2, 1711.  Steele.

 —­Eripe turpi
  Colla jugo, liber, liber dic, sum age—­

  Hor.

  Mr.  SPECTATOR,

I Never look upon my dear Wife, but I think of the Happiness Sir ROGER DE COVERLEY enjoys, in having such a Friend as you to expose in proper Colours the Cruelty and Perverseness of his Mistress.  I have very often wished you visited in our Family, and were acquainted with my Spouse; she would afford you for some Months at least Matter enough for one Spectator a Week.  Since we are not so happy as to be of your Acquaintance, give me leave to represent to you our present Circumstances as well as I can in Writing.  You are to know then that I am not of a very different Constitution from Nathaniel Henroost, whom you have lately recorded in your Speculations; and have a Wife who makes a more tyrannical