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Philip de Waverland, having laid his hand upon the book, when the clause, were I sole and she sole," was rehearsed, found a secret compunction rising in is mind, and stole it off again.

Richard de Loveless, who was a courtier, and a very well bred man, being observed to hesitate at the words after our marriage,' was thereupon required to explain himself. He replied, by talking very largely of his exact complaisance while he was a lover; and alleged, that he had not in the least disobliged his wife for a year and a day before marriage, which he hoped was the same thing.

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Rejected.

Joceline Jolly, esq. making it appear by unquestionable testimony, that he and his wife had preserved full and entire affection for the space of the first month commonly called the honey-moon; he had in consideration thereof one rasher bestowed upon him.

After this, says the record, many years passed over before any demandant appeared at Whichenovrehall; insomuch that one would have thought that the whole country were turned Jews, so little was their affection to the flitch of bacon.

The next couple enrolled had like to have carried it, if one of the witnesses had not deposed, that dining on a Sunday with the demandant, whose wife had sat below the squire's lady at church, she the said wife dropped some expressions as if she thought her husband deserved to be knighted; to which he returned a passionate pish! The judges taking the premises into consideration, declared the aforesaid behaviour to imply an unwarrantable ambition in the wife, and anger in the husband.

It is recorded as a sufficient disqualification of a

certain

certain wife, that, speaking of her husband, she said, God forgive him!

It is likewise remarkable, that a couple were rejected upon the deposition of one of their neighbours, that the lady had once told her husband, that it was her duty to obey; to which he replied, Oh, my dear! you are never in the wrong.

The violent passion of one lady for her lap-dog; the turning away of the old house-maid by another; a tavern-bill torn by the wife, and a tailor's by the husband; a quarrel about the kissing-crust; spoiling of dinners, and coming in late at nights: are so many several articles which occasioned the reprobation of some scores of demandants, whose names are recorded in the aforesaid register.

"Without enumerating other particular persons, I shall content myself with observing, that the sentence pronounced against one Gervase Poacher is, that he might have had bacon to his eggs, if he had not hitherto scolded his wife when they were over-boiled. And the deposition against Dorothy Doolittle runs in these words that she had so far usurped the dominíon of the coal-fire, (the stirring whereof her husband claimed to himself,) that by her good will she never would suffer the poker out of her hand.'

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I find but two couples, in this first century, that were successful: the first was a sea-captain and his wife, who since the day of their marriage had not seen one another till the day of the claim. The second was an honest pair in the neighbourhood; the husband was a man of plain good sense, and a peaceable temper; the woman was dumb.’

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REVENGE OF A SPANISH LADY. No. 611.

I SHALL present my readers with a memorable instance of revenge, taken by a Spanish lady upon a guilty lover, which may serve to show what violent effects are wrought by the most tender passion, when soured into hatred; and may deter the young and unwary from unlawful love. The story, however romantic it may appear, I have heard affirmed for a truth.

Not many years ago an English gentleman, who in a rencounter by night in the streets of Madrid had the misfortune to kill his man, fled into a church-porch for sanctuary. Leaning against the door, he was surprised to find it open, and a glimmering light in the church. He had the courage to advance towards the light; but was terribly startled at the sight of a woman in white, who ascended from a grave with a bloody knife in her hand. The phantom marched up to him, and asked him what he did there. He told her the truth, without reserve, believing that he had met a ghost ; upon which, she spoke to him in the following manner: Stranger, thou art in my power: I am a murderer as thou art. Know then, that I am à nun of a noble family. A base perjured man undid me, and boasted of it. I soon had him dispatched; but not content with the murder, I have bribed the sexton to let me enter his grave, and have now plucked out his false heart from his body; and thus I use a traitor's heart.' At these words she tore it in pieces, and trampled it under her feet.

A GENE

A GENEALOGICAL TREE. No. 612.

WERE the genealogy of every family preserved, there would probably be no man valued or despised on account of his birth. There is scarce a beggar in the streets, who would not find himself lineally descended from some great man; nor any one of the highest title, who would not discover several base and indigent persons among his ancestors. It would be a pleasant entertainment to see one pedigree of men appear together, under the same characters they bore when they acted their respective parts among the living. Suppoze therefore a gentleman, full of his illustrious family, should, in the same manner as Virgil makes Æneas look over his descendants, see the whole line of his progenitors pass in a review before his eyes, with how many varying passions would he behold shepherds and soldiers, statesmen and artificers, princes and beggars, walk in the procession of five thousand years! How would his heart sink or flutter at the several sports of fortune in a scene so diversified with rags and purple, handicraft tools and sceptres, ensigns of dignity and emblems of disgrace! and how would his fears and apprehensions, his transports and mortifications, succeed one another, as the line of his genealogy appeared bright or obscure!

In most of the pedigrees hung up in old mansionhouses, you are sure to find the first in the catalogue a great statesman, or a soldier with an honourable commission. The honest artificer that begot him, and all his frugal ancestors before him, are torn off from the top of the register; and you are not left to imagine that the noble founder of the family ever had a father. Were we to trace many boasted lines

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further backward, we should lose them in a mob of tradesmen, or a crowd of rustics, without hope of sceing them emerge again; not unlike the old Appian way, which, after having run many miles in length, loses itself in a bog.

I lately made a visit to an old country gentleman, who is very far gone in this sort of family madness. I found him in his study perusing an old register of his family, which he had just then discovered, as it was branched out in the form of a tree, upon a skin of parchment. Having the honour to have some of his blood in my veins, he permitted me to cast my eye over the boughs of this venerable plant; and asked my advice in the reforming of some of the superfluous branches.

We passed slightly over three or four of our immediate forefathers, whom we knew by tradition, but were soon stopped by an alderinan of London, who, I perceived, made my kinsman's heart go pit-a-pat. His confusion increased, when he found the alderman's father to be a grazier; but he recovered his fright upon seeing justice of the quorum at the end of his titles. Things went on pretty well as we threw our eyes occasionally over the tree, when unfortunately he perceived a merchant-taylor perched on a bough, who was said greatly to have increased the estate: he was just going to cut him off, if he had not seen gent. after the name of his son; who was recorded to have mortgaged one of the manors his honest father had purchased. A weaver, who was burnt for his religion in the reign of queen Mary, was pruned away without mercy; as was likewise a ycoman, who died of a fall from his own cart, But great was our triumph in one of the blood who was beheaded for high treason;

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