the critical ebb or flow of her fever- How wouldst thou have laugh'd and moralized upon my new profeffion?-and thou fhouldst have laugh'd and moralized on-Truft me, my dear Eugenius, I fhould have faid, "there are worse "occupations in this world than feeling a woman's pulse."-But a Griffet's! thou wouldst have faid-and in an open fhop! Yorick

So much the better: for when my views are direct, Eugenius, I care not if all the world faw me feel it,

THE HUSBAND..

PARIS.

I HAD HAD counted twenty pulfations, and was going on faft towards the fortieth, when her husband coming unexpected from a back parlour into the fhop, put me a little out in my reckoning-'Twas no body but her husband, fhe faid-fo I began a fresh score- Monfieur is fo good, quoth fhe, as he pass'd by us, as to give himself the trouble of feeling my pulse—

The

The husband took off his hat, and making me a bow, faid, I did him too much honour-and having said that, he put on his hat and walk'd

out.

Good God! faid I to myself, as he went out-and can this man be the husband of this woman?

Let it not torment the few who know what must have been the grounds of this exclamation, if I explain it to those who do not.

In London a fhopkeeper and a shopkeeper's wife feem to be one bone and one flefh: in the feveral endowments of mind and body, fometimes the one, fometimes the other has it, fo as in general to be upon a par, and totally with each other as nearly as man and wife need to do.

In Paris, there are fcarce two orders of beings more different: for the legislative and executive powers of the fhop not resting in the husband, he feldom comes there-in fome dark and difinal room behind, he fits commerceless

G 2

celefs in his thrum night-cap, the fame rough fon of Nature that Nature left him.

The genius of a people where nothing but the monarchy is falique, having ceded this department, with fundry others, totally to the women by a continual higgling with cuftomers of all ranks and fizes from morning to night, like fo many rough pebbles shook long together in a bag, by amicable collifions, they have worn down their afperities and sharp angles, and not only become round and smooth, but will receive, fome of them, a polish like a brilliant-Monfieur le Mari is little better than the ftone under your feet

-Surely-Surely man! it is not good for thee to fit alone-thou waft made for focial intercourfe and gentle greetings, and this improvement of our natures from it, I appeal to, as my evidence.

And how does it beat, Monfieur? faid fhe.-With all the benignity, faid I, looking quietly in her eyes, that I expected— She was going to fay fomething civil in return-but the

lad