inclinations; and thus the old women of Greece, like the lawyers of modern times, were employed to defeat the schemes and operations of each other, and like them too, it is presumable, laughed in their sleeves, while they hugged the gains that arose from vulgar credulity. POWER OF PHILTRES AND CHARMS. The Romans, who borrowed most of their customs from the Greeks, also followed them in that of endeavoring to conciliate love by the power of philtres and charms; a fact of which we have not the least room to doubt, as they are in Virgil and some other of the Latin poets so many instances that prove it. But it depends not altogether on the testimony of the poets: Plutarch tells us, that Lucullus, a Roman General, lost his senses by a love potion; and Caius Caligula, according to Suetonius, was thrown into a fit of madness by one which was given him by his wife Caesonia; Lucretius too, according to some authors, fell a sacrifice to the same folly. The Romans, like the Greeks, made use of these methods mostly in their affairs of gallantry and unlawful love; but in what manner they addressed themselves to a lady they intended to marry, has not been handed down to us, and the reason we suppose is, that little or no courtship was practised among them; women had no disposing power of themselves, to what purpose was it then to apply to them for their consent? They were under perpetual guardianship, and the guardian having sole power of disposing of them, it was only necessary to apply to him. In the Roman authors, we frequently read of a father, a brother, or a guardian, giving his daughter, his sister, or his ward, in marriage; but we do not recollect one single instance of being told that the intended bridegroom applied to the lady for her consent; a circumstance the more extraordinary, as women in the decline of the Roman empire had arisen to a dignity, and even to a freedom hardly equalled in modern times. EASTERN COURTSHIP.