and coldly said, "take this woman also and throw her into the grave with her companion." Such is the influence of the passion of love and jealousy upon the female mind even in _Negro land_, and well may we join Madame Junot in the remark, that "this memoir (of Zingha) which is strictly true may lead to much reflection in those who so bitterly attack the whites for their treatment of negro slaves. The latter in our colonies have _never yet undergone such degradation_."[6] [Footnote 6: "Add to this the horrible superstitions of the Giagas," says the same writer, "and our colonial slaves must have little to regret in their native country."] A woman in love, whilst she is willing to sacrifice all for the object beloved, may occasionally demand all. She is very apt to be too capricious for wise and prosperous government. A little experiment in love matters might occasionally be of more moment to her, than the regulation of trade, the modification of the corn laws, or the raising or lowering of the taxes. We all know that woman is sometimes extremely capricious and even despotic in the wars of Cupid. She does sometimes make most fearful exactions merely to manifest her power, or to confirm her faith in the fidelity and devotedness of her lover. Now all this will do well enough in private life, because it chequers the path of love with the powerfully exciting alternations of hope and disappointment, and throws around the object of our affections all those attractions, and all that more ethereal and imaginative loveliness, which the extreme difficulty of attainment ever generates in the mind. Although the lover may sometimes groan under such a despotism, and even attempt to renounce it,[7] yet the public sustains no injury. But when this capricious lover is a queen upon the throne, or an ambitious aspirant for political power, then the consequences may be truly disastrous. Rousseau tells us upon the authority of Brantome, that during the reign of Francis I, a young girl had a lover who was a great _babbler_. So capricious was she, and so fond of the exercise of power, that she ordered him to keep an absolute and profound silence, as the condition of her love, until she might release his tongue. He actually remained silent two years, when every body believed him dumb. Then one day in the presence of a large assembly, she boasted that by _one word_ she could restore speech to the _dumb_. She looked him in the face and said, "_parlez!_" "_speak!_" when the man began to speak again! Now in this case no one suffered but the poor man, and he had no doubt hours of ecstatic felicity in her occasional kindness, and sympathy, and love, for so much devotion. He gloried in the chains which he wore: he might be a little restive at times, under the caprice and whim of his mistress, but was no doubt in all his difficulties ever ready to apply to her the language of one of Martial's Epigrams on the whimsical waywardness of a friend,