comparison with mine; for I am at the head of all philosophers she says." "And I," returned Mrs. Thrale, "have all the muses in my train." "A fair battle!” cried my father; "come! compliment for compliment; and see who will hold out longest." "I am afraid for Mrs. Thrale,” said Mr. Seward," for I know that Mrs. Montagu exerts all her forces, when she sings the praises of Dr. Johnson." "Oh! yes!" cried Mrs. Thrale, "she has often praised him till he has been ready to faint." Well," said my father, "you two ladies must get him fairly between you to-day, and see which can lay on the paint the thickest, Mrs. Montagu or Mrs. Thrale." "I had rather," said the doctor, very composedly, "go to Bach's concert!"

THE Muses are turned gossips; they have lost
The buskined step, and the high-sounding phrase,
Language of gods. Come then, domestic Muse,
In slipshod measure loosely prattling on

Of farm or orchard, pleasant curds and cream,
Or drowning flies, or shoe lost in the mire

By little whimpering boy, with rueful face:

Come, Muse, and sing the dreaded Washing-Day.
Ye who beneath the yoke of wedlock bend,
With bowed soul, full well ye ken the day

Which week, smooth sliding after week, brings on
Too soon; for to that day nor peace belongs
Nor comfort: ere the first gray streak of dawn,
The red-armed washers come, and chase repose.
Nor pleasant smile, nor quaint device of mirth,
E'er visited that day: the very cat,

From the wet kitchen's seared and reeking hearth,
Visits the parlour, an unwonted guest.
The silent breakfast-meal is soon despatched;
Uninterrupted, save by anxious looks

Cast at the lowering sky, if sky should lower.
From that last evil, oh! preserve us, Heaven!
For should the skies pour down, adieu to all

Remains of quiet: then expect to hear
Of sad disasters, dirt and gravel-stains
Hard to efface, and loaded lines at once

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Snapped short, and linen-horse by dog thrown down,
And all the petty miseries of life.

Saints have been calm, while stretched upon the rack,
And Guatimozin smiled on burning coals;
But never yet did housewife notable
Greet with a smile a rainy washing-day.
But grant the welkin fair, require not thou
Who call'st thyself perchance the master there,
Or study swept, or nicely-dusted coat,

Or usual 'tendance;

ask not, indiscreet,

Thy stockings mended, though the yawning rents
Gape wide as Erebus; nor hope to find

Some snug recess impervious: should'st thou try
The 'customed garden walks, thine eye shall rue
The budding fragrance of thy tender shrubs,
Myrtle or rose, all crushed beneath the weight
Of coarse checked apron, with impatient hand
Twitched off when showers impend: or crossing line
Shall mar thy musings, as the cold wet sheet
Flaps in thy face abrupt.- Woe to the friend
Whose evil stars have urged him forth to claim,
On such a day, the hospitable rites!
Looks, blank at best, and stinted courtesy
Shall he receive. Vainly he feeds his hopes
With dinner of roast chicken, savoury pie,
Or tart, or pudding: - pudding he nor tart
That day shall eat; nor, though the husband try
Mending what can't be helped, to kindle mirth
From cheer deficient, shall his consort's brow
Clear up propitious: the unlucky guest
In silence dines, and early slinks away.

I well remember, when a child, the awe
This day struck into me; for then the maids,

I scarce knew why, looked cross, and drove me from them.
Nor soft caress could I obtain, nor hope

Usual indulgences; jelly or creams,
Relic of costly suppers, and set by

For me their petted one; or buttered toast,
When butter was forbid; or thrilling tale
Of ghost or witch, or murder, so I went
And sheltered me beside the parlour fire:

There my dear grandmother, eldest of forms,
Tended the little ones, and watched from harm,
Anxiously fond; though oft her spectacles
With elfin cunning hid, and oft the pins

Drawn from her ravelled stockings, might have soured
One less indulgent.-

At intervals my mother's voice was heard,
Urging despatch: briskly the work went on,
All hands employed to wash, to rinse, to wring,
To fold, and starch, and clap, and iron, and plait.
Then would I sit me down, and ponder much

Why washings were. Sometimes through hollow bowl
Of pipe amused me, blew and sent aloft

The floating bubbles; - little dreaming then
To see, Mongolfier! thy silken ball

Ride buoyant through the clouds,

so near approach The sports of children and the toils of men.

Earth, air, and sky, and ocean, have their bubbles;
And verse is one of them:

this most of all.

EXERCISE CXCVIII.

WOMAN, IN FRANCE. Anon.

A CHARACTERISTIC peculiarity in the private life of the French, is the influence exercised by women in matters of business. Women are entities in France! The law assigns them definite rights, and nature the inclination to maintain them. Their signature being indispensable in all family acts, they are consulted in the administration of matters which Englishwomen have as little the power as the inclination to control; and it rarely happens that the state of a man's lawsuits, estates, funds, or speculations, is not better understood by his wife than by himself. Book-keeping, in retail trade, is invariably the province of the woman; a shopwoman or female clerk, presiding at the desk, and receiving the money, while a shopman measures out the riband, or enlarges on the texture of a Fernaux shawl! At the theatres, the box-openers are invariably of the feminine gender; and a thousand masculine avocations dependent on the exercise of shrewdness, are executed by females; while scrubbing and rubbing, bed

making and broth-making, are assigned to the males. In Paris, as we once heard an Irish gentleman observe, the footmen are all housemaids.

It may be doubted, however, whether this exemption from hard labour is an enviable distinction. A woman never appears to less advantage than when raising her voice in pecuniary disputes; and the sharpness with which even the youngest and prettiest Frenchwoman looks after the main chance, is far from a becoming accomplishment. Instinctively versed in the pecuniary interests of life, they reduce every thing to the most matter-of-fact level:- love, matrimony, gallantry, all is matter for arithmetic. A table of interest exceeds in importance the tables of the law; and, just as the chicken emerging from the egg, begins to peck about it, as if hatched only to fight and feed, the young and timid French bride, scarcely enlarged from the hands of the governess, starts forth full-armed, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, able and willing to defend her interests, to bargain, buy, sell, speculate at the Bourse, or discuss the clauses of a lease. A Frenchwoman is taught to regard life in the most positive point of view there is not the slightest vein of poetry in her nature.

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This love and knowledge of business, (which in the highest class of life assumes the shape of political intrigue,) ́may, perhaps, be, in some measure, attributable to the scantiness of the mental resources supplied them by education. — A Frenchwoman's measure of instruction rarely exceeds the useful; and the excess of accomplishments, and extensive acquirements in modern languages, which diversify the leisure of a well-born Englishwoman, are rarely bestowed on a French girl, unless for professional purposes. Unaddicted to literature, and circumscribed in household occupation, she finds no better employment for her leisure than the care and administration of the property in which she possesses an inalienable interest.

Frenchwomen marry young; their duties commence early in life; among the middling classes, their children are reared away from home, that maternal cares may not interfere with the active business of life; and constant practice, unsoftened by gentler motives, qualifies a French matron, at five-and-thirty, to overmaster Shylock himself in the items of a bargain!

Nor does the narrow scale of private fortunes admit, as in London, of a separate family residence, apart and at a dis tance from the house of business. The banker's counting

--

house is usually next to his dining-room; and an attorney's office adjoins the boudoir of his lady; there is no Bedford Square, no citizen's "pie," to secure the rich tradesman's fastidious family from the vulgar clamour of trade. The lady of the wholesale dealer of the Rue des Lombards or Rue St. Denis, delights, on the contrary, in the hurry and scuffle which offend the nerves of the fine lady of Bishopsgate or Cheapside.

It may be observed, however, that housewifery and activity in business, which in England are rarely separable from coarseness of manners, produce no such influence over a Frenchwoman. Business may render her unamiable, but rarely vulgar. After performing household duties, executed in an English family by servants alone, or presiding over business in England invariably assigned to a clerk, a Frenchwoman of the middle class walks, elegantly dressed, into her drawing-room, receives her company with good breeding, and converses with intelligence; while one of our countrywomen arriving out of the kitchen, would inevitably move and talk like a cook.

EXERCISE CXCIX.

ANNA MARIA PORTER. Anon.

MISS ANNA MARIA PORTER, though a native of England was taken, an infant, to Scotland, where she was brought up. Her sister's, Miss Jane Porter's little domestic introductions to her works in "The Standard Novels," give several interesting anecdotes of the plan used in the culture of their minds there, by their mother, whose venerable name is not held in less respect, than that of any of the most revered of our British matrons; having shown in herself the best excellences of the female character, in a wife's, a widow's, a mother's duties fulfilled. She educated her children on these principles; and, though neither of her daughters took on herself the same train of woman's usual destiny, the pens of both have been devoted to instil, from the parental source, the precepts and example of such a character. But, perhaps, her youngest daughter, the subject of this memoir, executed her self-imposed task with a deeper insight, than her sister, into the female heart; and with a more intimate knowledge