ballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to
the dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.

XLVI.
Each night ought to have its _menu_.

XLVII.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours
everything, that is, familiarity.

XLVIII.
If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of
two consecutive nights, he has married too early.

XLIX.
It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it
is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things
from time to time.

L.
A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to
awaken.

LI.
The man who enters his wife's dressing-room is either a philosopher or
an imbecile.

LII.
The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.

LIII.
The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a
throne.

LIV.
A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making
her happy unless he sees her often at his knees.

It is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions
of snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men
that Sterne addressed, in _Tristram Shandy_, the letter written by
Walter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry
the widow Wadman.

These celebrated instructions which the most original of English
writers has comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptions
to complete our observations on the manner in which husbands should
behave to their wives; and we offer it in its original form to the
reflections of the predestined, begging that they will meditate upon
it as one of the most solid masterpieces of human wit.

"MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY,

"What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of
love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee--tho' not
so well for me--that thou hast occasion for a letter of
instructions upon that head, and that I am a