for what was going on domestically within the house on the top of the same stair, as she did for the in-door affairs of Japan or Tobolsk.  We may mention, also, that she persevered in reading the same chapter of the Bible, and in singing the same psalm, every Sunday morning.  In addition to these characteristics, Janet made it a point never to change the form or colour of her dress; so that if all the women in Edinburgh had been of her taste and mode of thinking, all the colours by which they are diversified and made interesting would have been reduced to the dead level of hodden-grey; the occupation of the imp Fashion would have been gone; nay, the angels, for fear of offending mortals, would have eschewed the nymph Iris, from whom the poets say they steal tints, and dipt their wings in a grey cloud before appearing in the presence of the douce daughters of men.

With all these imperfections—­and how many husbands would term some of them perfections!—­the married life of Thomas and Janet Dodds might have gone on for another five years, and five to that, if it had not been that Thomas, in a weary hour, cast a glance with a scarlet ray in it on a certain Mary Blyth, who lived in the Grassmarket—­a woman of whom our legend says no more than that she was a widow, besides being fair to the eye, and pleasant to the ear.  We could wish that we had it not to say; but as truth is more valuable than gold, yea, refined gold, we are under the necessity of admitting that that red ray betokened love, if an affection of that kind could be called by a name so hallowed by the benedictions of poets and the songs of angels.  You must take it in your own way, and with your own construction; but however that may be, we must all mourn for the fearful capabilities within us, and the not less awful potentialities in the powers without—­the one hidden from us up to the moment when the others appear, and all wrestling with the enemy prevented by what is often nothing less than a fatal charm.  From that moment, Thomas Dodds was changed after the manner of action of moral poisons; for we are to remember that while the physical kill, the other only transmute, and the transmutation may be from any good below grace to any evil above the devil.

This change in the mind of the husband included his manner of viewing those peculiarities in the mental constitution of Janet to which we have alluded.  Her desire to rule him was now rebellion; her devotion to “hussyskep” was nothing better than mercenary grubbing; her adhesion to her hodden-grey was vulgar affectation; and as to her monologues, they were evidence of insanity.  Such changes in reference to other objects happen to every one of us every day in the year, only we don’t look at and examine them; nor, if we did, could we reconcile them to any theory of the mind—­all that we can say being, that if we love a certain object, we hate any other which comes between us and our gratification; and thus, just as Mr. Thomas Dodds loved Mrs. Mary