nst the ceiling, while the
obedient Berghem answered by stamping his foot, to satisfy Mrs. Berghem
that he was not napping.

AElian had an aversion to the married state. Sigonius, a learned and
well-known scholar, would never marry, and alleged no inelegant reason;
"Minerva and Venus could not live together."

Matrimony has been considered by some writers as a condition not so well
suited to the circumstances of philosophers and men of learning. There
is a little tract which professes to investigate the subject. It has for
title, _De Matrimonio Literati, an coelibem esse, an vero nubere
conveniat_, i.e., of the Marriage of a Man of Letters, with an inquiry
whether it is most proper for him to continue a bachelor, or to marry?

The author alleges the great merit of some women; particularly that of
Gonzaga the consort of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino; a lady of such
distinguished accomplishments, that Peter Bembus said, none but a stupid
man would not prefer one of her conversations to all the formal meetings
and disputations of the philosophers.

The ladies perhaps will be surprised to find that it is a question among
the learned, _Whether they ought to marry?_ and will think it an
unaccountable property of learning that it should lay the professors of
it under an obligation to disregard the sex. But it is very questionable
whether, in return for this want of complaisance in them, the generality
of ladies would not prefer the beau, and the man of fashion. However,
let there be Gonzagas, they will find converts enough to their charms.

The sentiments of Sir Thomas Browne on the consequences of marriage are
very curious, in the second part of his Religio Medici, sect, 9. When he
wrote that work, he said, "I was never yet once, and commend their
resolutions, who never marry twice." He calls woman "the rib and crooked
piece of man." He adds, "I could be content that we might procreate like
trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to procreate the
world without this trivial and vulgar way." He means the union of sexes,
which he declares, "is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his
life; nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled
imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of
folly he hath committed." He afterwards declares he is not averse to
that sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful: "I could
look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture