I have heard him speak his mind very freely over his bottle, about the folly of the captain in taking a wife; as he thinks a young soldier should care for nothing but his “bottle and kind landlady.”  But, in fact, he says the service on the continent has had a sad effect upon the young men; they have been ruined by light wines and French quadrilles.  “They’ve nothing,” he says, “of the spirit of the old service.  There are none of your six-bottle men left, that were the souls of a mess dinner, and used to play the very deuce among the women.”

As to a bachelor, the general affirms that he is a free and easy man, with no baggage to take care of but his portmanteau; but a married man, with his wife hanging on his arm, always puts him in mind of a chamber candlestick, with its extinguisher hitched to it.  I should hot mind all this, if it were merely confined to the general; but I fear he will be the ruin of my friend, Master Simon, who already begins to echo his heresies, and to talk in the style of a gentleman that has seen life, and lived upon the town.  Indeed, the general seems to have taken Master Simon in hand, and talks of showing him the lions when he comes to town, and of introducing him to a knot of choice spirits at the Mulligatawney club; which, I understand, is composed of old nabobs, officers in the Company’s employ, and other “men of Ind,” that have seen service in the East, and returned home burnt out with curry, and touched with the liver complaint.  They have their regular club, where they eat Mulligatawney soup, smoke the hookah, talk about Tippoo Saib, Seringapatam, and tiger-hunting; and are tediously agreeable in each other’s company.

WIVES.

  Believe me, man, there is no greater blisse
  Than is the quiet joy of loving wife;
  Which whoso wants, half of himselfe doth misse. 
  Friend without change, playfellow without strife,
  Food without fulnesse, counsaile without pride,
  Is this sweet doubling of our single life.

  —­SIR P. SIDNEY.

There is so much talk about matrimony going on around me, in consequence of the approaching event for which we are assembled at the Hall, that I confess I find my thoughts singularly exercised on the subject.  Indeed, all the bachelors of the establishment seem to be passing through a kind of fiery ordeal; for Lady Lillycraft is one of those tender, romance-read dames of the old school, whose mind is filled with flames and darts, and who breathe nothing but constancy and wedlock.  She is for ever immersed in the concerns of the heart; and, to use a poetical phrase, is perfectly surrounded by “the purple light of love.”  The very general seems to feel the influence of this sentimental atmosphere; to melt as he approaches her ladyship, and, for the time, to forget all his heresies about matrimony and the sex.