Apropos, how do you like, I mean _really_ like, the married life? Ah, my friend! matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick youths and sighing girls take it to be! But marriage, we are told, is appointed by God, and I shall never quarrel with any of His institutions. I am a husband of older standing than you, and shall give you my ideas of the conjugal state, (_en passant_--you know I am no Latinist-is not _conjugal_ derived from _jugum_, a yoke?) Well, then, the scale of good wifeship I divide into ten parts. Good-nature, four; Good Sense, two; Wit, one; Personal Charms, viz., a sweet face, eloquent eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage (I would add a fine waist too, but that is so soon spoilt, you know), all these, one; as for the other qualities belonging to, or attending on, a wife, such as Fortune, Connections, Education (I mean education extraordinary), Family blood, etc., divide the two remaining degrees among them as you please; only, remember that all these minor properties must be expressed by _fractions,_ for there is not any one of them, in the aforesaid scale, entitled to the dignity of an _integer_. As for the rest of my fancies and reveries--how I lately met with Miss Lesley Baillie, the most beautiful, elegant woman in the world--how I accompanied her and her father's family fifteen miles on their journey, out of pure devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works of God, in such an unequalled display of them--how, in galloping home at night, I made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a part-- Thou, bonnie Lesley, art a queen, Thy subjects we before thee; Thou, bonnie Lesley, art divine, The hearts o' men adore thee. The very deil he could na scathe Whatever wad belang thee! He'd look into thy bonnie face And say, "I canna wrang thee"-- behold all these things are written in the chronicles of my imagination, and shall be read by thee, my dear friend, and by thy beloved spouse, my other dear friend, at a more convenient season. Now to thee and thy wife [_etc._--a mock benediction.] R.B. * * * * * CLXXV.--To MRS. DUNLOP. DUMFRIES, _24th September 1792_. I have this moment, my dear Madam, yours of the twenty-third. All your other kind reproaches, your news, etc., are out of my head when I read and think of Mrs. Henri's[126] situation. Good God! a heart-wounded helpless young woman--in a strange, foreign land, and that land convulsed with every horror that can harrow the human feelings --sick-looking, longing for a comforter, but finding none--a mother's feelings, too:--but it is too much: He who wounded (He only can) may He heal!