to lay it before. When I tell you I have a healthy vigorous constitution, a plentiful estate, no inordinate desires, and am married to a virtuous lovely woman, who neither wants wit nor good nature, and by whom I have a numerous offspring to perpetuate my family, you will naturally conclude me a happy man. But notwithstanding these promising appearances, I am so far from it, that the prospect of being ruined and undone, by a sort of extravagance which of late years is in a greater or less degree crept into every fashionable family, deprives me of all the comforts of my life, and renders me the most anxious miserarable man on earth. My wife, who was the only child and darling care of an indulgent mother, employed her early years in learning all those accomplishments we generally understand by good-breeding and a polite education. She sings, dances, plays on the lute and harpsichord, paints prettily, is a perfect mistress of the French tongue, and has made a considerable progress in Italian. She is besides excellently skilled in all domestic sciences, as preserving, pickling, pastry, making wines of fruits of our own growth, embroidering, and needle-works of every kind. Hitherto you will be apt to think there is very little cause of complaint, but suspend your opinion till I have further explained myself, and then I make no question but you will come over to mine. You are not to imagine I find fault that she either possesses or takes delight in the exercise of those qualifications I just now mentioned; it is the immoderate fondness she has to them that I lament; and that what is only designed for the innocent amusement and recreation of life, is become the whole business and study of hers. The six months we are in town (for the year is equally divided between that and the country) from almost break of day till noon, the whole morning is laid out in practising with her several masters, and to make up the losses occasioned by her absence in summer, every day in the week their attendance is required; and as they are all people eminent in their professions, their skill and time must be recompensed accordingly: so how far these articles extend I leave you to judge. Limning, one would think, is no expensive diversion; but as she manages the matter, it is a very considerable addition to her disbursements; which you will easily believe, when you know she paints fans for all her female acquaintance, and draws all her relations' pictures in miniature; the first must be mounted by nobody but Colmar, and the other set by nobody but Charles Mather. What follows is still much worse than the former; for, as I told you, she is a great artist at her needle, it is incredible what sums she expends in embroidery: for besides what is appropriated to her personal use, as mantuas, petticoats, stomachers, handkerchiefs, purses, pincushions, and working-aprons, she keeps four French protestants continually employed in making divers pieces of superfluous furniture, as quilts, toilets, hangings for closets, beds, window-curtains, easy-chairs, and tabourets: nor have I any hopes of ever reclaiming her from this extravagance, while she obstinately persists in thinking it a notable piece of good housewifery, because they are made at home, and she has had some share in the performance. There would be no end of relating to you the particulars of the annual charge, in furnishing her store-room with a profusion of pickles and preserves; for she is not contented with having every thing, unless it be done every way, in which she consults an hereditary book of receipts; for her female ancestors have been always famed for good housewifery, one of whom is made immortal by giving her name to an eye-water and two sorts of puddings. I can not undertake to recite all her medicinal preparations, as salves, serecloths, powders, confects, cordials, ratafia, persico, orange-flower, and cherry-brandy, together with innumerable sorts of simple waters. But there is nothing I lay so much to heart as that detestable catalogue of counterfeit wines, which derive their names from the fruits, herbs, or trees, of whose juices they are chiefly compounded; they are loathsome to the taste and pernicious to the health; and as they seldom survive the year, and then are thrown away, under a false pretence of frugality, I may affirm they stand me in more than if I entertained all our visiters with the best burgundy and champaign. Coffee, chocolate, green, imperial, peco, and bohea teas, seem to be trifles; but when the proper appurtenances of the tea-table are added, they swell the account higher than one would imagine. I can not conclude without doing her justice in one article, where her frugality is so remarkable, I must not deny her the merit of it, and that is in relation to her children, who are all confined, both boys and girls, to one large room in the remotest part of the house, with bolts on the doors, and bars to the windows; under the care and tuition of an old woman, who had been dry nurse to her grandmother. This is their residence all the year round; and as they are never allowed to appear, she prudently thinks it needless to be at any expense in apparel or learning. Her eldest daughter to this day would have neither read nor writ, if it had not been for the butler, who being the son of a country attorney, has taught her such a hand as is generally used for engrossing bills in chancery. By this time I have sufficiently tired your patience with my domestic grievances; which I hope you will agree could not well be contained in a narrower compass, when you consider what a paradox I undertook to maintain in the beginning of my epistle, and which manifestly appears to be but too melancholy a truth. And now I heartily wish the relation I have given of my misfortunes may be of use and benefit to the public. By the example I have set before them, the truly virtuous wives may learn to avoid those errors which have so unhappily misled mine, and which are visibly these three: First, in mistaking the proper objects of her esteem, and fixing her affections upon such things as are only the trappings and decorations of her sex. Secondly, in not distinguishing what becomes the different stages of life. And, lastly, the abuse and corruption of some excellent qualities, which, if circumscribed within just bounds, would have been the blessing and prosperity of her family, but by a vicious extreme are like to be the bane and destruction of it.' ADDISON.* L. *The original paper, No. 328, was written by Steele, but withdrawn, and this written by Addison, and substituted for it. No. 329. TUESDAY, MARCH 18. Ire tamen restat, Numa quò devenit, et Ancus. HoR. With Ancus, and with Numa, kings of Rome, My friend Sir Roger de Coverley told me the other night, that he had been reading my paper upon Westminster-abbey, (No. 26,) in which, says he, there are a great many ingenious fancies. He told me at the same time, that he observed I had promised another paper upon the tombs, and that he should be glad to go and see them with me, not having visited them since Ke had read history. I could not at first imagine how this. came into the knight's head, till I recollected that he had been very busy all last summer upon Baker's Chronicle, which he has quoted several times in his disputes with Sir Andrew Freeport since his last coming to town. Accordingly I promised to call upon him the next morning, that we might go together to the abbey. I found the knight under his butler's hands, who always shaves him. He was no sooner dressed than he called for a glass of the widow Trueby's water, which he told me he always drank before he went abroad. He recommended to me a dram of it at the same time, with so much heartiness, that I could not forbear drinking it. As soon as I had got it down, I found it very unpalatable, upon which the knight, observing that I had made several wry faces, told me that he knew I should not like it at first, but |