"This advantage," exclaims our Viscount, "is still better than to have one of those voluminous mammas, who under the weight of ten good lustres and an undulating fat, are not the less solicitous to appear young, and simper their girlish graces with a set of teeth from Desirabode," and a head of hair from Michalon. Yes, a literary or rhyming mother-in-law is, in my opinion, the summit of felicity for a clever bridegroom. There is no bird-lime of surer effect than flattery for catching a woman who loves to see herself in print: in this case, you learn by heart some of her somniferous productions; of course you fall into ecstasies or swoon away at every verse; in pastoral and elegy Madame Deshoulières and Madame Dufresnois, are but ninnies and simpletons, you exclaim, compared to your eleventh Muse; then it is that you yourself will also try to compose some little poems and madrigals, modest dwarfs presuming not to approach the giants which your eleventh Muse gives you every morning to digest; and finally you hire, at whatever expense, some journalist or reviewer, who, although rarely of his own opinion, but always of that of his purse, will lavish his typographical incense and venal enthusiasm, which you have taken care to purchase for ready-money. Oh! don't be uneasy upon this subject; there are twenty ways of creeping into the good graces of a lady-author, who quits her household affairs to shoot, like Icarus, into a romantic immortality. Sometimes, I confess, the task is tiresome. What a nuisance to be daily overwhelmed, at dinner, in the drawing-room, at breakfast, even at the theatre, with bundles of verses and endless rhymes, whose harmonious and pompous delivery pursues you even in your dreams! Not to be able to swallow a mouthful at table without having it rendered insipid by some sonorous strophe which buzzes in your ear! To be forced to cry out charming! beautiful! while you mutter to yourself, what wretched stuff! But, on the other hand, take a bird's-eye view of the handsome fortune which is to be the reward of this heroic complaisance; contemplate, moreover, that heap of canvass bags through which the fine five-franc pieces are seen to model their bright diameter; those bank notes which are well worth all your love-letters; that gold, source of every prosperity; that glittering furniture in mahogany and rosewood; those ottomans; that superb marriage-bed, of mushroom colour or jonquil; those golden doves which are billing over the canopy; those purple curtains; the obsequious valet-de-chambre with his plumeau ; the lady's maid with pockets to her apron; and, above all, those parchment marriage-articles upon which the law itself has engraved the guarantee of your fortune -Are not all these treasures worth a few moments' cunning and suppleness?" For the benefit of all aspiring bachelors, we extract our author's "Vrai Code de l'Hymen :" "Instead of falling in love with a grisette, who has no other patrimony than her lilies and roses, her plump graces, and her wreath of flowers, the whole in a furnished garret at fifteen francs a month, look out for a good bulky dowager, or an imposing and substantial baroness of fifty-five, who drinks freely at every meal her bottle of best claret, never reads any thing but her cook's bill of fare, and knows to a nicety when a pullet is well-dressed. A solid and discreet man who ties the matrimonial knot with a woman of this description, understands his true interests: instead of wasting his youth in the dust of a counting-house, or scribbling in a lawyer's-office, our gentleman discourses with a complacent pride about his château, his garden-wall which he is going to rebuild, his hounds, his monkey, and his newspapers; and throws a patronizing glance, as he walks, upon his former companions, to whom he has refunded, by the hands of a third person, certain half-crown pieces, which they had formerly lent him to buy a dinner.-For Heaven's sake never indulge in any thing romantic à la Oswald, à la Corinne; that superb apparatus of sentiments rarified in the alembic of Platonism soon vanishes at the sight of misery; and when you are left in a wretched loft with a mistress full of sensibility, do you know what remains of those marriages which are sneeringly termed the union of hunger and thirst?-mutual regrets-manuscripts of romances, and pawnbrokers' duplicates. Reflect, then, seriously, conjugalizers of both sexes, before you submit yourselves to the empire of a sentiment; anticipate the future fate of the Venus, or the Apollo, who has captivated you, and do not imagine that this firework of the heart can be of long continuance. Alas! after the fine Cathe A fashionable dentist in the Palais Royal rine wheel has been let off at Tivoli, there remains nothing but blackened scaffolding, scorched pasteboard, and the bad odour of sulphur; and to many husbands marriage, after the honeymoon, appears little better than a Tivoli firework." Of the propriety of submitting to our parents in all matrimonial affairs, the following is adduced as an exemplary illustration: "Edward, a handsome cashier, fell in love with the beautiful Olympia, only daughter of an opulent banker. Love had never more vehemently inflamed two hearts already united by the bonds of sympathy; nevertheless, the father, having learnt the folly of his daughter, formally declared in an angry letter, that she must prepare to renounce her chimerical passion. Olympia replies, for lovers are never sparing of long-winded epistles, that Fate had pointed out as her husband the only individual who could secure her happiness, and concluded her high-flown and romantic letter with the following remarkable words-Edward or Death!!!-What did papa write under this theatrical and mournful declaration?" Neither the one nor the other."-And he was perfectly right. Edward had nothing but a good figure, a little talent, and a good many creditors. Olympia passing from opulence to penury, in a melancholy hovel, disinherited by her parents, and forced to make a little kitchen, in a little room, with little means, would soon have repented her melo-dramatic resolutions; love, who is a lover of good cheer, would as usual have flown out of the window, and our married couple, according to custom, would have recriminated upon their mutual folly." Against the dupery of fortune-tellers and gipsies the following caution is given to all amorous damsels : "I beseech all those young ladies, who, while they have the bandage of love or of the senses over their eyes, never see any thing except through the prism of illusions and desire, not to yield to the puerile superstition of consulting one of those Pythonesses of the highway, one of those sibyls of the garret, who, of their own plenary authority, read in the future every body's fate but their own, and in a game of cards spread out like a fan, in the white of eggs, or the grounds of coffee, shew you sweethearts as clearly as astrologers perceive inhabitants in the moon. Believe me, these sorceresses of the cellar, upon their modern tripods, with their black or white magic, their legerdemain and conjurer's tricks, know not a jot more of the matter than those porteresses who prophesy husbands for their chambermaids of their hotel, by signalizing the knave of hearts as a fair lover, the queen of spades as a dangerous rival, and the ace of diamonds as a letter from the country. Do you wish to know, ladies, the only method of securing a rich and good husband, who after love (which has an immortality of some months after marriage) will preserve for you an eternal esteem? It is by your good conduct, your manners, your prudence, that you will obtain this treasure." It would have been well for our author, and better for his readers, had he never given more objectionable advice. Upon the subject of education, he disserteth after the following fashion. "In bestowing a brilliant education upon a girl whose whole fortune consists in the pride of her superficial learning, in her harpsichord, her musicbooks, and her fastidious purism in language, you are unconsciously preparing for her the most painful lot. Quitting her high-bred school with a complete varnish of fashion and scientific trumpery, she no sooner reaches home than she looks down with scorn upon her own mother, who is for ever breaking poor Priscian's head, and sometimes offends her ear by a pleonasm, and sometimes by a blunder in prosody. Even the chambermaid cannot ply her broom without doing an injury to grammatical sensibility; our precious blue-stocking reasons about rhythin and the rules of versification, composes somniferous novels upon the questions whether Love is a purely metaphysical or material being,' and with all this gallimaufry of words, and of alembicized and ambitious phrases, will never be able to make any water-gruel for her husband in case he should fall sick. What have mythology, the Dryads and Hamadryads, Pan and the Fauns, Endymion and the moon, to do in a butcher's or a grocer's shop? and why should the daughter of such people be able to jabber a few words of Italian, or have her head loaded with the revolutions of the Lower Empire? Young persons, however, should make a serious study of dancing, which is to marriage what the candle is to the moth it is the principal flame at which Hymen lights his torch. I recommend them, then, to frequent all bails, public and private; and if a perfumed billet-doux should be slipped into their hands, they should make a point of refusing the first, as the surest method of receiving a great many more. These little obstacles are the thorns of the moss-rose, which centuple its value. In your anxiety, however, to conjugalize, I beseech you, by the apple of your eye, not to imitate those husband-hunting Nina Vernons, who, perched in the balcony of an alcove or park-pavilion overhanging a high road, holding a book or a guitar in an affected attitude, seem to be fishing with a line for any husband who will nibble at the bait. I knew a young lady at Lille so possessed with this matrimoniomania, that it was impossible for a young man to pay her the commonest attentions without her considering it as an overture, and threatening him with an action for breach of promise when he undeceived her of her strange error. I recollect an unfortunate young man, who was imprudent enough to reply to some of her ridiculous missives. Heavens! he had no sooner arrived at Lille, than he was summoned to appear before the father and mother; the new Nina Vernon throws her arms around him with a frantic cry; calls upon him to realize his vows, and declares that she will only release him at the altar. A lucky falsehood enabling him to throw himself upon his horse, and gallop away from this nuptial cut-throat, I encountered him in the High-street of Bethune, still imagining that he saw at his heels all the evil genii and malevolent sylphs of Hymen." In a chapter devoted to the marriage-ceremonies of England, our author begins by stating, that " clandestine marriages are no where so prevalent, inasmuch as any two lovers have only to send for a Protestant priest, who, for a trifle, will give the sanction of the law to the caprices or desires of a momentary passion. It is not uncommon for the clergy," he adds, "to write upon their windows marriages performed here upon cheap terms;' and we are informed that women have this great advantage, that, if they cannot succeed by other means, they may intoxicate their lover, who, on recovering his senses, may find himself the husband of the woman whom he most despises." With an unusual scrupulosity, he admits that these fraudulent marriages have lately been prohibited by an Act of Parliament. Guernsey is the new Cythera of conjugalism for which all those embark whose nuptials encounter any legal obstacle, and the throwing of the garter and other exploded ceremonies are described as indispensable accompaniments to every union. Among the anecdotes, we are told of an Englishman who suddenly resolved to be married before he had finished smoking his pipe, which he accomplished with some little difficulty; and of another, whose wife confessing upon her death-bed that she had been guilty of several infidelities-"Alas!" exclaimed her husband, "you have no more reason to be satisfied with me; I promise therefore not to preserve any remembrance of your misconduct if you in return will forgive me whatever wrongs I may have committed towards you." Not less surprised than overcome by this excessive goodness, she gladly consented, when he informed her, that having discovered her gallantries, he had taken the liberty of poisoning her, and that she was then dying by his hand!-A Milord Anglais, of great wealth, lately arrived at Paris, was so much smitten with the beauty of the poor woman's daughter in whose house he lodged, that he cried with a sheepish air-" Moi epouser vous toute de suite." The damsel blushed. "Volez-vo, voi o no?" (oui ou non.) The young woman being advised to decide instantly, as this marrier à la minute might change his mind, very seriously cried out-" Oui ;" to which Milord replied, "Une Gentelman ne pas avoir qu'une parole," and the wedding was shortly solemnized with great magnificence. Eight days after, a friend returning from Italy gave him such an attractive account of Naples that he exclaimed afresh-" Toute de suite, toute de suite, dais chival de la poste, et à Naples!" and in a few days his new wife finds herself under the burning skies of Lombardy. These most authentic anecdotes are wound up by the marriage of a Parisian exquisite. "Saint-Elme was charming, brilliant, witty, fait à peindre; he fenced, and wrote a billet-doux en vrai Lovelace: the Coryphæus of the side scenes, the actresses contended for his favours, and liveried lacqueys brought him letters perfumed à la Vanille, with appointments from ladies of distinction. Descending from his unpaid tilbury in the Bois de Boulogne, and ogling through a diamond eye-glass, for which he was still in the jeweller's books, he was the darling of those fashionable dames who parade their landaus in fine weather, scattering from their horses' feet clouds of ostentatious dust. Nothing in appearance was wanting to the happiness of our ambered hero, since he took his tea at Hardy's, on the Italian Boulevard, dined at Beauvilliers, employed an English habit-maker, wore a waiscoat of Eau du Nil, had his pockets filled with orange-comfits, candied cherries, pastilles au punch, and Nougat de Marseilles; and was, moreover, often seen in the private boxes of the theatres; but alas! his prosperity was soon to end." Besieged one morning by bailiffs and creditors who offered him his choice-payment or a prison-he decided as firmly as Cæsar when he crossed the Rubicon, and, accompanied by his father, betook himself to the horrible Lady Formes, a Londoner, of a hundred thousand sterling a-year, whose hideous portrait is exhibited in the frontispiece to the volume, and sacrifices himself to this ancient fright for the purpose of paying his creditors. Our author, it will be observed, is about as happy in the names of our nobility as Rousseau in his "Nouvelle Heloise," and Madame de Staël in her "Corinne ;" and as to the clumsy ridicule of his story and his caricature, we apprehend that it is much less disreputable to possess the forbidding features of a Lady Formes, than the sordid and profligate soul of a Saint-Elme. After recommending the revival of a custom among the Babylonians, who used to assemble all their marriageable young women in a public place, and bestow the money which was bidden for the beauties in marriage portions for those who were ugly, our author quotes from LEGOUVE "Quand l'homme de la vie entreprend le voyage, La femme avec douceur guide ses premiers pas; A sentiment which ought to have inspired him with a little more re spect for the sex : and, when he ventures in another place to exclaim |