but forty-five pounds a-year—­she but a trifling sum; so that they are likely to feast upon love and ecclesiastical history which will be very empty food, without a proper mixture of beef and pudding.  I have however, engaged our friend, who is the curate’s landlord, to give them a good lease; and if Mrs D——­, instead of spending whole days in reading Collier, Hicks, and vile translations of Plato and Epictetus; will but form the resolution of taking care of her house, and minding her dairy, things may go tolerably.  It is not likely that their tender loves will give them many sweet babes to provide for.

I MET the lover yesterday, going to the ale-house in his dirty nightgown, with a book under his arm, to entertain the club; and, as Mrs D——­ was with me at the time, I pointed out to her the charming creature:  she blushed, and looked prim; but quoted a passage out of Herodotus, in which it is said that the Persians wore long night-gowns.  There is really no more accounting for the taste in marriage of many of our sex, than there is for the appetite of your Miss S——­y, who makes such waste of chalk and charcoal, when they fall in her way.

AS marriage produces children, so children produce care and disputes; and wrangling, as is said (at least by old batchelors (sic) and old maids) is one of the sweets of the conjugal state.  You tell me that our friend Mrs ——­ is, at length, blessed with a son, and that her husband, who is a great philosopher, (if his own testimony is to be depended upon) insists on her suckling it herself.  You ask my advice on this matter; and, to give it you frankly, I really think that Mr ——­’s demand is unreasonable, as his wife’s constitution is tender, and her temper fretful.  A true philosopher would consider these circumstances; but a pedant is always throwing his system in your face, and applies it equally to all things, times and places, just like a taylor who would make a coat out of his own head, without any regard to the bulk or figure of the person that must wear it.  All those fine-spun arguments that he has drawn from nature, to stop your mouths, weigh, I must own to you, but very little with me.  This same Nature is, indeed, a specious word, nay there is a great deal in it, if it is properly understood and applied; but I cannot bear to hear people using it, to justify what common sense must disavow.  Is not nature modified by art in many things?  Was it not designed to be so?  And is it not happy for human society, that it is so?  Would you like to see your husband let his beard grow, until he would be obliged to put the end of it in his pocket, because this beard is the gift of nature?  The instincts of nature point out neither taylors, nor weavers, nor mantua-makers, nor sempsters, nor milliners; and yet I am very glad that we do not run naked like the Hottentots.  But not to wander from the subject—­I grant, that nature has furnished the mother with milk to nourish her child;