Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the dress of the bride-maids--the three charming Miss Foresters--on this morning. To give the bride an opportunity of shining singly, they had come habited all in green. I am ill at describing female apparel; but, while _she_ stood at the altar in vestments white and candid as her thoughts, a sacrificial whiteness, _they_ assisted in robes, such as might become Diana's nymphs--Foresters indeed--as such who had not yet come to the resolution of putting off cold virginity. These young maids, not being so blest as to have a mother living, I am told, keep single for their father's sake, and live altogether so happy with their remaining parent, that the hearts of their lovers are ever broken with the prospect (so inauspicious to their hopes) of such uninterrupted and provoking home-comfort. Gallant girls! each a victim worthy of Iphigenia! I do not know what business I have to be present in solemn places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable disposition to levity upon the most awful occasions. I was never cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony and I have long shaken hands; but I could not resist the importunities of the young lady's father, whose gout unhappily confined him at home, to act as parent on this occasion, and _give away the bride._ Something ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious of all moments--a sense of my unfitness to have the disposal, even in imagination, of the sweet young creature beside me. I fear I was betrayed to some lightness, for the awful eye of the parson--and the rector's eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a rebuke--was upon me in an instant, souring my incipient jest to the tristful severities of a funeral.