to sing every evening,-he being the very first person who had ever voluntarily caused the issue of those notes, which more resembled the screaming of a macaw than the tones of a human being. To be sure, he did not listen,

from mortal; but he not only regularly requested her to sing, but took care, by suggesting single songs, to prevent her sister from singing with her,-who, thus left to her own devices, used to sit in a corner listening to William Morland with a sincerity and earnestness of attention very different from the makebelieve admiration which she had been used to show by her mamma's orders to the clever men of fortune whom she had been put forward to attract. That Mrs. Leslie did not see what was going forward in that quarter, was marvellous; but her whole soul was engrossed by the desire to clutch Sir Arthur, and so long as he called on Caroline for bravura after bravura, for scena after scena, she was happy.

Mr. Leslie, usually wholly inattentive to such proceedings, was on this occasion more clear-sighted. He asked Mary Morland one

the parish, had been his old companions and playmates at the manor-house, and from whom he had been parted during a long tour in Greece, Italy, and Spain,—consented with a very good grace to this arrangement; the more so as, himself a lively and clever man, he per--that would have been too much to expect ceived, apparently with great amusement, the designs of his hostess, and for the first two or three days humoured them with much drollery; affecting to be an epicure, that she might pass off her cook's excellent confectionary for Miss Caroline's handiwork; and even pretending to have sprained his ankle, that he might divert himself by observing in how many ways the same fair lady-who, something younger, rather prettier, and far more docile than her sister, had been selected by Mrs. Leslie for his intended bride-would be pressed by that accomplished match-maker into his service; handing him his coffee, for instance, fetching him books and newspapers, offering him her arm when he rose from the sofa, following him about with footstools, cushions, and ottomans, and waiting on him just like a valet or a page in female attire. At the end of that period,-from some un-day "whether she knew what her brother and explained change of feeling, whether respect Sir Arthur were about ?" and, on her blushing for his friend William Morland, or weariness and hesitating in a manner very unusual with of acting a part so unsuited to him, or some her, added, chucking her under the chin, “ A relenting in favour of the young lady,-he word to the wise is enough, my queen; I am threw off at once his lameness and his affecta- not quite a fool, whatever your aunt may be, tion, and resumed his own singularly natural and so you may tell the young gentlemen." and delightful manner. I saw a great deal of And with that speech he walked off. him, for my father's family and the Selbys The next morning brought a still fuller dehad intermarried once or twice in every centuryclaration of his sentiments. Sir Arthur had since the Conquest; and though it might have puzzled a genealogist to decide how near or how distant was the relationship, yet, as amongst North-country folk "blood is warmer than water," we continued not only to call cousins, but to entertain much of the kindly feeling by which family counexion often is, and always should be, accompanied. My father and Mr. Leslie had always been intimate, and Mary Morland and myself having taken a strong liking to each other, we met at one house or the other, almost every day; and, accustomed as I was, to watch the progress of Mrs. Leslie's manoeuvres, the rise, decline, and fall of her several schemes, I soon perceived that her hopes and plans were in full activity on the present occasion.

It was, indeed, perfectly evident that she expected to hail Caroline as Lady Selby before many months were past; and she had more reason for the belief than had often happened to her, inasmuch as Sir Arthur not only yielded with the best possible grace to her repeated entreaties for the postponement of his journey, but actually paid the young lady considerable attention, watching the progress of her portrait of Miss Morland, and aiding her not only by advice but assistance, to the unspeakable benefit of the painting, and even carrying his complaisance so far as to ask her

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received, by post, a letter which had evidently affected him greatly, and had handed it to William Morland, who had read it with equal emotion; but neither of them had mentioned its contents, or alluded to it in any manner. After breakfast, the young men walked off together, and the girls separated to their different employments. I, who had arrived there to spend the day, was about to join them, when I was stopped by Mr. Leslie. "I want to speak to you," said he, "about that cousin of yours. My wife thinks he's going to marry Caroline; whereas it's plain to me, as doubtless it must be to you, that whatever attention he may be paying to that simple child—and, for my own part, I don't see that he is paying her any-is merely to cover William Morland's attachment to Bab. So that the end of Mrs. Leslie's wise schemes will be, to have one daughter the wife of a country curate—”

"A country curate, Mr. Leslie !" ejaculated Mrs. Leslie, holding up her hands in amazement and horror.

"And the other," pursued Mr. Leslie, "an' old maid."

"An old maid!" reiterated Mrs. Leslie, in additional dismay—“ An old maid !" Her very wig stood on end; and what farther she would have said was interrupted by the entrance of the accused party.

"I am come, Mr. Leslie," said Sir Arthur,

MONGER.

-" do not move, Mrs. Leslie-pray stay, my MRS. TOMKINS, THE CHEESEdear cousin,-I am come to present to you a double petition. The letter which I received this morning was, like most human events, of PERHAPS the finest character in all Molière mingled yarn-it brought intelligence of good is that of Madame Pernelle, the scolding and of evil. I have lost an old and excellent grandmother in the "Tartufe;" at least, that friend, the rector of Hadley-cum-Appleton, and scene (the opening scene of that glorious have, by that loss, an excellent living to pre-play,) in which, tottering in at a pace which sent to my friend William Morland. It is her descendants have difficulty in keeping up above fifteen hundred a-year, with a large with, she puts to flight her grandson, and her house, a fine garden, and a park-like glebe, daughter-in-law's brother, (think of making altogether a residence fit for any lady; and it men fly the field!) and puts to silence her comes at a moment in which such a piece of daughter-in-law, her grand-daughter, and even preferment is doubly welcome, since the first the pert soubrette, (think of making women part of my petition relates to him. Hear it hold their tongues!) and finally boxes her favourably, my dear sir-my dear madam : he own waiting-maid's ears for yawning and loves your Barbara-and Barbara, I hope and looking tired,-that scene of matchless scoldbelieve, loves him." ing has always seemed to me unrivalled in the comic drama.* The English version of it in "The Hypocrite" is far less amusing, the old Lady Lambert being represented in that piece rather as a sour devotee, whose fiery zeal, and

"There, Mrs. Leslie !" interrupted Mr. Leslie, with an arch nod. "There! do you hear that?"

"You are both favourably disposed, I am sure," resumed Sir Arthur. "Such a son-in-her submission to Cantwell, and even to Mawlaw must be an honour to any man-must he not, my dear madam?-and I, for my part, have a brother's interest in his suit."

There, Mr. Leslie!" ejaculated in her turn Mrs. Leslie, returning her husband's nod most triumphantly. "A brother's interest!-do you hear that?"

"Since," pursued Sir Arthur, "I have to crave your intercession with his dear and admirable sister, whom I have loved, without knowing it, ever since we were children in the nursery, and who now, although confessing that she does not hate me, talks of want of fortune-as if I had not enough, and of want of beauty and want of accomplishments -as if her matchless elegance and unrivalled conversation were not worth all the doll-like prettiness or tinsel acquirements under the sun. Pray intercede for me, dear cousin!dear sir!" continued the ardent lover; whilst Mr. Leslie, without taking the slightest notice of the appeal, nodded most provokingly to the crest-fallen match-maker, and begged to know how she liked Sir Arthur's opinion of her system of education?

What answer the lady made, this deponent saith not-indeed, I believe she was too angry to speak-but the result was all that could be desired by the young people: the journey was again postponed; the double marriage celebrated at Hallenden; and Miss Caroline, as bridesmaid, accompanied the fair brides to "canny Northumberland," to take her chance for a husband amongst "fresh fields and pas

tures new."

worm, form the chief cause, the mainspringas it were, of her lectures; whilst Madame Pernelle, although doubtless the effect of her harangues is heightened and deepened by her perfect conviction that she is right and that all the rest are wrong, has yet a natural gift of shrewishness-is, so to say, a scold born, and would have rated her daughter-in-law and all her descendants, and bestowed her cuffs upon her domestics with equal good-will, though she had never aspired to the reputation of piety, or edified by the example of M. Tartufe. The gift was in her. Not only has Molière beaten, as was to be expected, his own English imitator, but he has achieved the far higher honour of vanquishing in this single instance, his two great forerunners, Masters Shakspeare and Fletcher. For, although the royal dame of Anjou had a considerable talent for vituperation, and Petruchio's two wives, Catherine and Maria,† were scolds of promise; none of the three, in my mind, could be said

*I cannot resist the temptation of subjoining, at the end of this paper, some part of that inimitable scene; believing that, like other great writers of an older date, Molière has been somewhat "pushed from his stool" by later dramatists, and is more talked of than

read. At all events, any one who does remember Madame Pernelle will not be sorry to meet with her again.-Vide note, at the end of this paper.

+ Shakspeare's fine extravaganza, "The Taming of the Shrew," gave rise to an equally pleasant continuation by Fletcher, entitled "The Woman's Prize; or, the professed lovers of the old drama, in which PeThe Tamer Tamed;" a play little known, except to truchio, having lost his good wife Catherine, is betrayed into a second marriage to a gentle, quiet, demure damsel, called Maria, who, after their nuptials, changes into an absolute fury, turns the table upon him completely, and succeeds in establishing the fe male dominion upon the firmest possible basis, being aided throughout by a sort of chorus of married women from town and country.

to approach Madame Pernelle, not to mention the superior mode of giving tongue (if I may affront the beautiful race of spaniels by applying in such a way a phrase appropriated to their fine instinct,)-to say nothing of the verbal superiority, Flipote's box on the ear remains unrivalled and unapproached. Catherine breaking the lute over her master's head is a joke in comparison.

monger, in Belford, with the whole produce of her dairy, celebrated for a certain mock Stilton, which his customers, who got it at about half the price of the real, were wont to extol as incomparably superior to the more genuine and more expensive commodity.

Simon hesitated-looked at Deborah's sour face; for she had by strong persuasion been induced to promise not to scold- that is to Now, notwithstanding the great French- say, not to speak, (for, in her case, the terms man's beating his English rivals so much in were synonymous ;)-muttered something the representation of a shrew, I am by no which might be understood as a civil excuse, means disposed to concede to our Continental and went to the stable to get ready his horse neighbours any supremacy in the real living and chaise. In that short walk, however, the model. I should be as sorry that French wo- prudent swain recollected that a rival cheesemen should go beyond us in that particular monger had just set up over-against him in gift of the tongue, which is a woman's sole the same street of the identical town of Belweapon, her one peculiar talent, as that their ford; that the aforesaid rival was also a bachsoldiers should beat ours in the more manly elor, and, as Mrs. Ford had hinted, would way of fighting with sword and with gun, or doubtless not be so blind to his own interest their painters or poets overpass us in their re- as to neglect to take her mock Stilton, with spective arts. The art of scolding is no tri- so small an encumbrance as a sour-looking fling accomplishment, and I claim for my wife, who was said to be the best manager in countrywomen a high degree of excellence in the county: so that by the time the crafty all the shades and varieties thereunto belong-stepmother reappeared with a parting glass of ing, from the peevish grumble to the fiery re- capital currant wine, (a sort of English stirtort-from "the quip modest" to "the coun-rup-cup, which she positively affirmed to be tercheck quarrelsome." The gift is strictly national too; for although one particular district of London (which, indeed, has given its name to the dialect *) has been celebrated, and I believe deservedly celebrated, for its breed of scolds; yet I will undertake to pick up in any part of England, at four-and-twenty hours' notice, a shrew that shall vie with all Billingsgate.

To go no farther for an instance than our own market-town, I will match my worthy neighbour, Mrs. Tomkins, cheesemonger, in Queen-street, against any female fish-vender in Christendom. She, in her single person, simple as she stands there behind her counter, shall outscold the whole parish of Wapping. Deborah Ford, such was Mrs. Tomkins's maiden appellation, was the only daughter of a thrifty and thriving yeoman in the county of Wilts, who having, to her own infinite dissatisfaction and the unspeakable discomfort of her family, remained a spinster for more years than she cared to tell, was at length got rid of by a manoeuvring stepmother, who made his marrying Miss Deborah the condition of her supplying Mr. Simon Tomkins, cheese

Even the Americans-although, in a land so celebrated for freedom of speech, and so jealous of being outdone in any way by the mother country, one would think that they might by this time have acquired an established scolding-place of their own-still use the word "Billingsgate" to express the species of vituperation of which I am treating. I found the phrase in that sense in a very eloquent speech of their very eloquent advocate, Mr. Mason, as reported in a New York paper, no longer ago than last June: a diffusion of fame which our fish-wives owe to the vide spread of our language. Who in the New Woever heard of their Parisian rivals, les Dames de la lle!

of Deborah's making,) Simon had changed, or, as he expressed it, made up his mind to espouse Miss Deborah, for the benefit of his trade and the good of his customers.

Short as was the courtship, and great as were the pains taken by Mrs. Ford who performed impossibilities in the way of conciliation) to bring the marriage to bear, it had yet nearly gone off three several times, in consequence of Deborah's tongue, and poor Simon's misgivings, on whose mind, especially on one occasion, the night before the wedding, it was powerfully borne, that all the excellence of the currant wine, and all the advantages of the mock Stilton, were but poor compensations, not only for peace and happy life," and "awful rule and just supremacy," but for the being permitted, in common parlance, to call his soul his own. Things, however, had gone too far. The stepmother talked of honour and character, and broken hearts; the father hinted at an action for damages, and a certain nephew, Timothy, an attorney-at-law; whilst a younger brother, six feet two in height, and broad in proportion, more than hinted at a good cudgelling. So Simon was married.

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Long before the expiration of the honeymoon, he found all his worst fears more than confirmed. His wife-" his mistress," as in the homely country phrase he too truly called her-was the greatest tyrant that ever ruled over a household. Compared with our tigress, Judith Jenkins, now Mrs. Jones, was a lamb. Poor Simon's shopman left him, his maid gave warning, and his apprentices ran away; so that he who could not give warning, and was ashamed to run away, remained the one solitary subject of this despotic queen, the

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band's smoking, and threatened ten times a day to demolish the pipes and the boxes, which were good for nothing, as she observed, but to keep the men-folk idle and to poison every Christian thing about them;" an affront which both parties endured with a patient silence, which only served to exasperate her wrath.*

Find it where he would, much need had poor Mr. Tomkins of comfort. Before his marriage, he had been a spruce dapper little man, with blue eyes, a florid complexion, and hair of the colour commonly called sandy,alert in movement, fluent in speech, and much addicted to laughing, whether at his own jokes or the jokes of his neighbours; he belonged to the Bachelors' Club and the Odd Fellows, was a great man at the cricket-ground, and a person of some consideration at the vestry; in short was the beau idéal of the young thriving country tradesman of thirty years ago.

luckless man-of-all-work of that old and well-trils either to her shopman's snuff or her husaccustomed shop. Bribery, under the form of high wages and unusual indulgences, did to a certain point remedy this particular evil; so that they came at last only to change servants about once a fortnight on an average, and to lose their apprentices, some by running away and some by buying themselves off, not oftener than twice a year. Indeed, in one remarkable instance, they had the good fortune to keep a cook, who happened to be stone deaf, upwards of a twelvemonth; and, in another still more happy case, were provided with a permanent shopman, in the shape of an old pliant rheumatic Frenchman, who had lived in some Italian warehouse in London until fairly worn off his legs, in which plight his importers had discarded him, to find his way back to la belle France as best he could. Happening to fall in with him, on going to the London warehouse with an order for Parmesan, receiving an excellent character of him from his employers, and being at his wit's end for a man, Mr. Simon Tomkins, after giving him due notice of his wife's failing, engaged the poor old foreigner, and carried him home to Queen-street in triumph. A much-enduring man was M. Leblanc! Next after his master, he, beyond all doubt, was the favourite object of Deborah's objurgation; but, by the aid of snuff and philosophy, he bore it bravely. "Mais je suis philosophe!" cried the poor old Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders, and tapping his box when the larum of his mistress's tongue ran through the house" Toutefois je suis philosophe!" exclaimed he with a patient sigh and Deborah, who, without comprehending the phrase, understood it to convey some insinuation against herself, redoubled her clamour at the sound.

He had not been married half a year before such an alteration took place as really would have seemed incredible. His dearest friends did not know him. The whole man was changed-shrunk, shrivelled, withered, dwindled into nothing. The henpecked husband in the farce, carrying his wife's clogs in one hand and her bandbox in the other, and living on the "tough drumsticks of turkeys, and the fat flaps of shoulders of mutton," was but a type of him. The spirit of his youth was departed. He gave up attending the coffeehouse or the cricket-ground, ceased to joke or to laugh at jokes; and he who had had at club and vestry" a voice potential as double as the mayor's," could hardly be brought to answer Yes or No to a customer. The man was evidently in an atrophy. His wife laid the blame to his smoking, and his friends laid it to his wife, whilst poor Simon smoked on and said nothing. It was a parallel case to Peter Jen

Tobacco in its various forms seems to have been the chief consolation of her victims. If snuff and philosophy were Leblanc's resources, a pipe and a tankard were his master's; and in both cases the objects to which they During the great dispute in France about the Ancients Nothing is so provoking in an adversary as silence. resorted for comfort drew down fresh lectures and Moderns, in Madame Dacier's time, one of the from their liege lady. She complained of the combatants published a pamphlet with the title. Resmell. And of a surety the smell is an abomi-ponse au Silence de M. de la Motte. I confess that I nation; only that, her father and her seven brothers, to say nothing of half-a-dozen uncles and some score of cousins, having been as atrociously given to smoking as if they had been born and bred in Germany, so that eight or ten chimneys had been constantly going in one room in the old farm-house of Bevis-land, the fumes of tobacco might be said to be her native air; and Mr. Tomkins's stock-in-trade consisting, besides the celebrated cheese which had so unluckily brought him acquainted with her, of soap, candles, salt-butter, bacon, pickles, oils, and other unsavoury commodities, one would really think that no one particular stench could greatly increase the ill odours of that most unfragrant shop. She, however, imputed all the steams that invaded her nos

have some sympathy with the writer. It was but the other day that I and another lady were engaged in an argument with one of the stronger sex, and had just beaten him out of the field-were on the very point of giving him the coup de grace, when all on a sudden my gentleman made us a low bow, and dehe would not say another word on the subject. I clared that we should have it in our own way-that don't know that I was ever so much provoked in my life. To be defrauded of our just victory (for of course we were right.) whilst the cunning wretch (a clever man, too, which made it worse) looked as complacent and as smiling as if he had yielded the point from pure compassion to our weakness! Mrs. Tomkins would have boxed his ears. It is just as if an opponent at chess, whose pawns are almost gone, and whose pieces are taken, whose game, in short, is des perate-ho must in a move or two be checksweep aw the board. I wonder what Mrs. Tomkins mated-shroud suddenly proclaim himself tired, and would say to that!

kins's, and Stephen Lane might have saved him; but Stephen not being amongst his cronies, (for Simon was a Tory,) and Simon making no complaint, that chance was lost. He lingered through the first twelve months after their marriage, and early in the second he died, leaving his widow in excellent circumstances, the possessor of a flourishing business and the mother of a little boy, to whom she (the will having of course been made under her supervision) was constituted sole guardian.

she was, in the most liberal acceptation of the words, prudent, sagacious, and honest in her pecuniary dealings, buying the very best commodities, and selling them at such a fair and moderate profit as ensured a continuation of the best custom of the county-the more especially as her sharp forbidding countenance and lank raw-boned figure were seldom seen in the shop. People said (but what will not people say ?) that one reason for her keeping away from such excellent scolding-ground was to be found in les doux yeux of M. Pierre Leblanc, who, withered, wizened, brokendown cripple as he was, was actually suspected of having made an offer to his mistress;-a story which I wholly disbelieve, not only because I do not think that the poor phi

sive than an active nature, would ever have summoned resolution to make such a proposal; but because he never, as far as I can discover, was observed in the neighbourhood with a scratched face-a catastrophe which would as certainly have followed the audacity in question, as the night follows the day. Moreover, it is bad philosophy to go hunting about for a remote and improbable cause, when a sufficient and likely one is close at hand; and there was, in immediate juxtaposition with Mrs. Tomkins's shop, reason enough to keep her out of it to the end of time.

Incredible as it may seem, considering the life she had led him while alive, Deborah was really sorry for poor Simon-perhaps from a touch of remorse, perhaps because she lost in him the most constant and patient listener to her various orations-perhaps from a mix-losopher, whose courage was rather of a pasture of both feelings; at all events, sorry she was; and as grief in her showed itself in the very novel form of gentleness, so that for four and twenty hours she scolded nobody, the people about her began to be seriously alarmed for her condition, and were about to call in the physician who had attended the defunct, to prescribe for the astounding placability of the widow, when something done or left undone, by the undertaker or his man, produced the effect which medical writers are pleased to call "an effort of nature;" she began to scold, and scolding all through the preparations for the funeral, and the funeral itself, and the succeeding ceremonies of will-reading, legacypaying, bill-settling, stock-valuing, and so forth, with an energy and good-will, and an unwearying perseverance that left nothing to be feared on the score of her physical strength. John Wesley preaching four sermons, and Kean playing Richard three times in one day, might have envied her power of lungs. She could have spoken Lord Brougham's famous six hours' speech on the Law Reform without exhaustion or hoarseness. But what do I talk of a six hours' speech? She could have spoken a whole night's debate in her own single person, without let or pause, or once dropping her voice, till the division, so prodigious was her sostenuto. Matthews and Miss Kelly were nothing to her. And the exercise agreed with her she throve on it.

So for full twenty years after the death of Mr. Tomkins did she reign and scold in the dark, dingy, low-browed, well-accustomed shop of which she was now the sole direct

ress.

M. Pierre Leblanc continued to be her man of business; and as, besides his boasted philosophy, he added a little French pliancy and flattery of which he did not boast, and a great deal of dexterity in business and integrity, as well as clearness in his accounts, they got on together quite as well as could be expected. The trade flourished; for, to do Deborah justice, she was not only a good manager, in the lowest sense of the term-which, commonly speaking, means only frugal,-but

I have said that this shop, although spacious and not incommodious, was dark and lowbrowed, forming a part of an old-fashioned irregular tenement, in an old-fashioned irregular street. The next house, with a sort of very deep and square bay-window, which was, by jutting out so as to overshadow it, in some sort the occasion of the gloom which, increased, perhaps, by the dingy nature of the commodities, did unquestionably exist in this great depository of cheese and chandlery-ware, happened to be occupied by a dealer in whalebone in its various uses, stays, umbrellas, parasols, and so forth,-a fair, mild, gentle Quakeressa female Friend, with two or three fair smiling daughters, the very models of all that was quiet and peaceful, who, without even speaking to the furious virago, were a standing rebuke to that "perturbed spirit." The deep bay-window was their constant dwelling-place. There they sat tranquilly working from morning to night, gliding in and out with a soft stealing pace like a cat, sleek, dimpled, and dove-eyed, with that indescribable nicety and purity of dress and person, and that blameless modesty of demeanour, for which the female Friend is so generally distinguished. Not a fault could Mrs. Tomkins discover in her next neighbour, but if ever woman hated her next neighbour, she hated Rachel May.

The constant sight of this object of her detestation was, of course, one of the evils of Mrs. Tomkins's prosperous life ;-but she had