The good lady is generally surrounded by little documents of her prevalent taste; novels of a tender nature; richly bound little books of poetry, that are filled with sonnets and love tales, and perfumed with rose-leaves; and she has always an album at hand, for which she claims the contributions of all her friends.  On looking over this last repository, the other day, I found a series of poetical extracts, in the Squire’s handwriting, which might have been intended as matrimonial hints to his ward.  I was so much struck with several of them, that I took the liberty of copying them out.  They are from the old play of Thomas Davenport, published in 1661, entitled “The City Night-Cap;” in which is drawn out and exemplified, in the part of Abstemia, the character of a patient and faithful wife, which, I think, might vie with that of the renowned Griselda.

I have often thought it a pity that plays and novels should always end at the wedding, and should not give us another act, and another volume, to let us know how the hero and heroine conducted themselves when married.  Their main object seems to be merely to instruct young ladies how to get husbands, but not how to keep them:  now this last, I speak it with all due diffidence, appears to me to be a desideratum in modern married life.  It is appalling to those who have not yet adventured into the holy state, to see how soon the flame of romantic love burns out, or rather is quenched in matrimony; and how deplorably the passionate, poetic lover declines into the phlegmatic, prosaic husband.  I am inclined to attribute this very much to the defect just mentioned in the plays and novels, which form so important a branch of study of our young ladies; and which teach them how to be heroines, but leave them totally at a loss when they come to be wives.  The play from which the quotations before me were made, however, is an exception to this remark; and I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of adducing some of them for the benefit of the reader, and for the honour of an old writer, who has bravely attempted to awaken dramatic interest in favour of a woman, even after she was married!

The following is a commendation of Abstemia to her husband Lorenzo: 

  She’s modest, but not sullen, and loves silence;
  Not that she wants apt words, (for when she speaks,
  She inflames love with wonder,) but because
  She calls wise silence the soul’s harmony. 
  She’s truly chaste; yet such a foe to coyness,
  The poorest call her courteous; and which is excellent,
  (Though fair and young) she shuns to expose herself
  To the opinion of strange eyes.  She either seldom
  Or never walks abroad but in your company. 
  And then with such sweet bashfulness, as if
  She were venturing on crack’d ice, and takes delight
  To step into the print your foot hath made,
  And will follow you whole fields; so she will drive
  Tediousness out of time, with her sweet character.