at wrong to women is, depend
upon it, Eusebius, the "brute of a husband," called, by courtesy, in
higher life, "_Sir_ John Brute." Horace says wittily, that Venus puts
together discordant persons and minds with a bitter joke, "saevo mittere
cum joco;" it begins a jest, and ends a _crying_ evil. We name the thing
that should be good, with an ambiguous sound that gives disagreement to
the sense. It is marry-age, or matter o' money. And let any man who is a
euphonist, and takes omens from names, attend the publication of banns, he
will be quite shocked at the unharmonious combination. Now, you will laugh
when I tell you positively, that within a twelvemonth I have heard called
the banns of "John Smasher and Mary Smallbones;" no doubt, by this time
they are "marrow bones and cleaver," what else could be expected? Did you
never note how it has puzzled curates to read the ill-assorted names?

"Serpentes avibus geminantur, tigribus agni."

Then to look at the couples as they come to be bound for life. One would
think they had been shaken together hap-hazard, each in a sack. I have met
with a quotation from Hermippus who says--"There was at Lacedaemon a very
retired hall or dwelling, in which the unmarried girls and young bachelors
were confined, till each of the latter, in that obscurity which precluded
the possibility of choice, fixed on one, which he was obliged to take as a
wife, without portion. Lysander having abandoned that which fell to his
lot, to marry another of greater beauty, was condemned to pay a heavy
fine." Is there not in the _Spectator_ a story or dream, where every man
is obliged to choose a wife unseen, tied up in a sack? At this said
Lacedaemon, by the by, women seem to have somewhat ruled the roast, and
taken the law, at least before marriage, into their own hands; for
Clearchus Solensis, in his adages, reports, that "at Lacedaemon, on a
certain festival, the women dragged the unmarried men about the altar, and
beat them with their hands, in order that a sense of shame at the
indignity of this injury might excite in them a desire to have children of
their own to educate, and to choose wives at a proper season for this
purpose." Mr Stephens, in his _Travels in Yucatan_, shows how wives are
taken and treated in the New World. "When the Indian grows up to manhood,
he requires a woman to make him tortillas, and to provide him warm water
for his bath at night. He procures one sometimes by the providence of th