apart. My lord is admiring his countenance in the
glass, while his bride is twiddling her marriage ring on her
pocket-handkerchief; and listening with rueful countenance to Counsellor
Silvertongue, who has been drawing the settlements. The girl is pretty,
but the painter, with a curious watchfulness, has taken care to give her a
likeness to her father, as in the young viscount's face you see a
resemblance to the earl, his noble sire. The sense of the coronet pervades
the picture, as it is supposed to do the mind of its wearer. The pictures
round the room are sly hints indicating the situation of the parties about
to marry. A martyr is led to the fire; Andromeda is offered to sacrifice;
Judith is going to slay Holofernes. There is the ancestor of the house (in
the picture it is the earl himself as a young man), with a comet over his
head, indicating that the career of the family is to be brilliant and
brief. In the second picture, the old lord must be dead, for madam has now
the countess's coronet over her bed and toilet-glass, and sits listening
to that dangerous Counsellor Silvertongue, whose portrait now actually
hangs up in her room, whilst the counsellor takes his ease on the sofa by
her side, evidently the familiar of the house, and the confidant of the
mistress. My lord takes his pleasure elsewhere than at home, whither he
returns jaded and tipsy from the "Rose", to find his wife yawning in her
drawing-room, her whist-party over, and the daylight streaming in; or he
amuses himself with the very worst company abroad, whilst his wife sits at
home listening to foreign singers, or wastes her money at auctions, or,
worse still, seeks amusement at masquerades. The dismal end is known. My
lord draws upon the counsellor, who kills him, and is apprehended whilst
endeavouring to escape. My lady goes back perforce to the alderman in the
City, and faints upon reading Counsellor Silvertongue's dying speech at
Tyburn, where the counsellor has been executed for sending his lordship
out of the world. Moral:--Don't listen to evil silver-tongued counsellors:
don't marry a man for his rank, or a woman for her money: don't frequent
foolish auctions and masquerade balls unknown to your husband: don't have
wicked companions abroad and neglect your wife, otherwise you will be run
through the body, and ruin will ensue, and disgrace, and Tyburn. The
people are all naughty, and Bogey carries them all off.

In the _Rake's Progress_, a loose