hanical life. I
remember, in my plough-boy days, I could not conceive it possible that a
noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave--How
ignorant are plough-boys!--Nay, I have since discovered that a _godly
woman_ may be a *****!--But hold--Here's t'ye again--this rum is
generous Antigua, so a very unfit menstruum for scandal.

Apropos, how do you like, I mean _really_ like, the married life? Ah, my
friend! matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick
youths and sighing girls take it to be! But marriage, we are told, is
appointed by God, and I shall never quarrel with any of his
institutions. I am a husband of older standing than you, and shall give
you _my_ ideas of the conjugal state, (_en passant_; you know I am no
Latinist, is not _conjugal_ derived from _jugum_, a yoke?) Well, then,
the scale of good wifeship I divide into ten parts:--good-nature, four;
good sense, two; wit, one; personal charms, viz. a sweet face, eloquent
eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage (I would add a fine waist too, but
that is so soon spoilt you know), all these, one; as for the other
qualities belonging to, or attending on, a wife, such as fortune,
connexions, education (I mean education extraordinary) family, blood,
&c., divide the two remaining degrees among them as you please; only,
remember that all these minor properties must be expressed by
_fractions_, for there is not any one of them, in the aforesaid scale,
entitled to the dignity of an _integer._

As for the rest of my fancies and reveries--how I lately met with Miss
Lesley Baillie, the most beautiful, elegant woman in the world--how I
accompanied her and her father's family fifteen miles on their
journey, out of pure devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works
of God, in such an unequalled display of them--how, in galloping home
at night, I made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a
part--

Thou, bonny Lesley, art a queen,
Thy subjects we before thee;
Thou, bonny Lesley, art divine,
The hearts o' men adore thee.

The very deil he could na scathe
Whatever wad belang thee!
He'd look into thy bonnie face
And say, "I canna wrang thee."

--behold all these things are written in the chronicles of my
imaginations, and shall be read by thee, my dear friend, and by thy
beloved spouse, my other dear friend, at a more convenient season.

Now, to thee, and to thy before-designed _bosom_-comp