very probably adorn, as well as bestow, the bull's feather.

To describe it according to heraldry art, if I am not mistaken--gules,
two swords, saltire-wise, or; second coat, a chevron sable between three
bugle-horns, OR [so it ought to be]: on a chief of the second, three
lions rampant of the first--but the devil take them for their
hieroglyphics, should I say, if I were determined in good earnest to
marry!

And determined to marry I would be, were it not for this consideration,
that once married, and I am married for life.

That's the plague of it!--Could a man do as the birds do, change every
Valentine's day, [a natural appointment! for birds have not the sense,
forsooth, to fetter themselves, as we wiseacre men take great and solemn
pains to do,] there would be nothing at all in it. And what a glorious
time would the lawyers have, on the one hand, with their noverini
universi's, and suits commenceable on restitution of goods and chattels;
and the parsons, on the other, with their indulgencies [renewable
annually, as other licenses] to the honest desires of their clients?

Then, were a stated mullet, according to rank or fortune, to be paid on
every change, towards the exigencies of the state [but none on renewals
with the old lives, for the sake of encouraging constancy, especially
among the minores] the change would be made sufficiently difficult, and
the whole public would be the better for it; while those children, which
the parents could not agree about maintaining, might be considered as the
children of the public, and provided for like the children of the antient
Spartans; who were (as ours would in this case be) a nation of heroes.
How, Jack, could I have improved upon Lycurgus's institutions had I been
a lawgiver!

Did I never show thee a scheme which I drew up on such a notion as this?
--In which I demonstrated the conveniencies, and obviated the
inconveniencies, of changing the present mode to this? I believe I never
did.

I remember I proved to a demonstration, that such a change would be a
mean of annihilating, absolutely annihilating, four or five very
atrocious and capital sins.--Rapes, vulgarly so called; adultery, and
fornication; nor would polygamy be panted after. Frequently would it
prevent murders and duelling; hardly any such thing as jealousy (the
cause of shocking violences) would be heard of: and hypocrisy between man
and wife be banished the bosoms of each. Nor, probably, would th