drew them into
my conclusion from their own concessions; thus:

_"In marriage are two happy things allowed,
A wife in wedding-sheets, and in a shroud.
How can a marriage state then be accursed,
Since the last day's as happy as the first?_

"If you think they were too easily confuted, you may conclude them not
of the first sense, by their talking against marriage.

"Yours,

"MARIANA."

I observed Sappho began to redden at this epistle; and turning to a
lady, who was playing with a dog she was so fond of as to carry him
abroad with her; "Nay," says she, "I cannot blame the men if they have
mean ideas of our souls and affections, and wonder so many are brought
to take us for companions for life, when they see our endearments so
triflingly placed: for, to my knowledge, Mr. Truman would give half his
estate for half the affection you have shown to that Shock: nor do I
believe you would be ashamed to confess, that I saw you cry, when he had
the colic last week with lapping sour milk. What more could you do for
your lover himself?" "What more!" replied the lady, "there is not a man
in England for whom I could lament half so much." Then she stifled the
animal with kisses, and called him, Beau, Life, Dear, Monsieur, Pretty
Fellow, and what not, in the hurry of her impertinence. Sappho rose up;
as she always does at anything she observes done, which discovers in her
own sex a levity of mind, which renders them inconsiderable in the
opinion of others.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 11.

Letters from the Hague of the 16th instant, N.S., say, that the siege of
Tournay went on with all imaginable success; and that there has been no
manner of stop given to the attempts of the Confederates since they
undertook it, except that by an accident of firing a piece of ordnance,
it burst, and killed fifteen or sixteen men. The French army is still
in the camp of Lens, and goes on in improving their entrenchments. When
the last advices came away, it was believed the town of Tournay would be
in the hands of the Confederates by the end of this month. Advices from
Brussels inform us, that they have an account of a great action between
the malcontents in the Vivarez, and the French king's forces under the
command of the Duke of Roquelaure, in which engagement there were
eighteen hundred men killed on the spot. They add, that all sorts of
people who are under any oppression or disc