their husbands sleep well at night,—they are never at ease except when the poor man is ailing, that they may have the pleasure of recovering him again. It gratifies both their medical vanity and their love of power, by making him more dependent upon them; and it likewise gratifies all the finer feelings of romance. What a treasure! What a subject I shall be about ten years hence, when shivering at every breeze, for the laboratory of such a wife, when my withered carcase will be made to undergo an endless succession of experiments, for the benefit of the medical world. I should be forced, in order to escape her prescriptions, to conceal my complaints when I was really sick, and to go out and take medicine by stealth, as a man goes to the club, when tired of the society of his wife. Were heaven for some wise purpose to deliver me into the hands of a nostrum-skilled wife, it would in an instant dissipate all my dreams of retiring to spend my latter days in indolence and quiet; I would see with grief that I was doomed to enter upon a more active career than that in which I had been so long engaged, for I would consider her and myself as two hostile powers commencing a war in which both would be continually exerting all the resources of their genius-she to circumvent me and throw me into the hospital, and I to escape captivity and elixirs. No modern war could be more inveterate, for it would terminate only with the death of one or other of the combatants. If notwithstanding the strength of my conjugal affection, the natural principle of self-preservation should be still stronger and make me lament to survive her, I imagine my eating heartily and sleep

ing soundly would very soon bring about her dissolu

tion."

(To be continued.)

HIGH HARROGATE.

HIGH HARROGATE! High Harrogate !
The sacred sojourn of the great;

I love thy common, green with grass,
That feeds a goose, but starves an ass:
I love thy air, pure, aromatic,
That makes one feel aristocratic;
For lordly lungs give out an air,

That, breathed by ladies, makes them fair;
Respired by fools, it makes them wise,
And then they other fools despise.
Plebeians some call parvenus,

Which means, men no one ever knew

Inflated by this wondrous gas

Scarce deign to know you as they pass,

And every look and every word

Tells all the world they know a lord.
Just like a beggar, if he can
Rub elbows with a gentleman,
Thinks by the very simple act
He gains a polish by the contact ;
Or like a puddle shone upon,
Reflects the gleam of morning sun,
They like false diamonds shine at night,
By reason of a borrow'd light.

Come then, ye tinkers, tailors, tanners,
Who lack the thing call'd polish'd manners,
High Harrogate's the very place

To give ye every winning grace.

And when return'd to home, you'll prate
Of the lords that lodged at Harrogate.

A RECOLLECTION.

"The early lost, the long deplored."

I SAW thee in thy beauty's pride, Undimm'd by care, unchanged by painWert thou this instant by my side,

I could not gaze again ;

I could not bear to note the power
Of cold decay on such a flower.

I met thee last in festal hall,

With rosy wreaths thy temples bound;
I mark'd thy footstep's graceful fall
To music's magic sound ;—

How could I look and see that thou,
Wert cold, and stiff, and lifeless now.

Thou wert a dream of loveliness,

And as a dream art pass'd and gone; But I ne'er mark'd thy charms grow less, Nor saw thy gladness flown:

Bright now, as then, thy form to me!
No dimness wraps thy memory.

A rose that bloom'd its summer day,

Pluck'd ere its leaves could fade or fall; A fragrant odour, borne away

Ere custom bade it pall;

A strain of song that floated past,
Clear, soft, melodious, to the last.

A brief bright sunbeam from the sky,
That lit, then left some verdant plain;
A star, emerging clear on high,

Then shut 'neath clouds again;
All short-lived things most fair to see,
Are types, and fitting types, of thee.

Thou died 'st a flower for earth too bright,
Ere taint of earth had touch'd thy bloom;
But who, that mark'd thine hour of light,
Could bear to mark thy doom-

Or trace the blight of cold decay,
That swept thy youth's sweet pride away

I saw them not!-I gazed on thee,
In health and hope and beauty blest;
And ever thus thy memory

Shall live within my breast!-
No dream, for to thy spirit's home,
Decay's cold blight can never come.

?

J. GORDON.

221

FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.

THE following conversation took place in Mrs. Churchill's drawing-room, where her daughter, Emily Churchill, was at her embroidery-while her cousin, Mary Seaton, was reading aloud :

"I hate Ladies' Magazines," said Emily Churchill to her cousin, Mary Seaton, when the other had finished reading aloud a paragraph in the morning paper, which announced that a new publication under that title was about to appear; "surely we need no addition to the catalogue of insipid effusions, with which scribbling women bore us incessantly."

"You are not obliged to read these insipid effusions, my dear," returned Mary Seaton. "You are not singular in your opinion, though I differ from you entirely; not only do I find them amusing, but think they might be made a vehicle of usefulness."

"Not while there is such a prejudice against meddling in what is considered the province of men only! Where will you find a woman who would dare to touch upon science, unless she had the talent of a Somerville, or a Marcet, or a Martineau? Still less would any venture upon politics, for fear of incurring the reproaches of all the male part of the community."

66

“And are there no topics of interest, nor field for usefulness, apart from the difficult paths of science, and out of the turmoil of politics?" enquired Mary.