_Selling a Wife_ (Vol. vii., p. 602.).--A case of selling a wife actually and _bona fide_ happened in the provincial town in which I reside, about eighteen years ago. A man publicly sold his wife at the market cross for 15l.: the buyer carried her away with him some seven miles off, and she lived with him till his death. The seller and the buyer are both now dead, but the woman is alive, and is married to a _third_ (or a _second_) husband. The legality of the transaction has, I believe, some chance of being tried, as she now claims some property belonging to her first husband (the seller), her right to which is questioned in consequence of her supposed alienation by sale; and I am informed that a lawyer has been applied to in the case. Of course there can be little doubt as to the result. SC. _Life_ (Vol. vii., pp. 429. 608.).--Compare with the lines quoted by your correspondents those of Moore, entitled "My Birthday," the four following especially: "Vain was the man, and false as vain, Who said[9], 'Were he ordain'd to run His long career of life again, He would do all that he had done.'" Many a man would gladly live his life over again, were he allowed to bring to bear on his {44} second life the _experience_ he had acquired in that past. For in the grave there is no room, either for _ambition_ or _repentance_; and the degree of our happiness or misery for eternity is proportioned to the state of preparation or unpreparation in which we leave _this world_. Instead of many a man, I might have said most good men; and of the others, all who have not passed the rubicon of hope and grace. The vista of the past, however, appears a long and dreary retrospect, and _any_ future is hailed as a relief: yet on second and deeper thought, we would mount again the rugged hill of life, and try for a brighter prospect, a higher eminence. JARLTZBERG. [Footnote 9: Fontenelle.] * * * * * "Immo Deus mihi si dederit renovare juventam, Utve iterum in cunis possim vagire; recusem." Isaac Hawkins Browne, _De Animi Immortalitate_, lib. i., near the end. (See _Selecta Poemata Anglorum Latina_, iii. 251.) F. W. J. _Passage of Thucydides on the Greek Factions_ (Vol. vii., p. 594.).--The passage alluded to by SIR A. ALISON appears to be the celebrated description of the moral effects produced by the conflicts of the Greek factions, which is subjoined to the account of the Corcyraean sedition, iii. 82. The quotation must, however, have been made from memory, and it is amplified and expanded from the original. The words adverted to seem to be: [Greek: mellesis de promethes deilia euprepes, to de sophron tou anandrou proschema, kai to pros hapan xuneton epi pan argon.] Thucydides, however, proceeds to say that the cunning which enabled a man to plot with success against an enemy, or still more to discover his hostile purposes, was highly esteemed. L.