itter of puppies when mouthing a bone in the midst of
her young family. Medea and her children are familiar to us, and so is
the grief of Constance. Mrs. Quiverful, when she first heard from her
husband the news which he had to impart, felt within her bosom all the
rage of the lioness, the rapacity of the hound, the fury of the tragic
queen, and the deep despair of the bereaved mother.

Doubting, but yet hardly fearing, what might have been the tenor of
Mr. Slope's discourse, she rushed back to her husband as soon as the
front door was closed behind the visitor. It was well for Mr. Slope
that he so escaped--the anger of such a woman, at such a moment,
would have cowed even him. As a general rule, it is highly desirable
that ladies should keep their temper: a woman when she storms always
makes herself ugly, and usually ridiculous also. There is nothing so
odious to man as a virago. Though Theseus loved an Amazon, he showed
his love but roughly, and from the time of Theseus downward, no man
ever wished to have his wife remarkable rather for forward prowess
than retiring gentleness. A low voice "is an excellent thing in
woman."

Such may be laid down as a very general rule; and few women should
allow themselves to deviate from it, and then only on rare occasions.
But if there be a time when a woman may let her hair to the winds,
when she may loose her arms, and scream out trumpet-tongued to the
ears of men, it is when nature calls out within her not for her own
wants, but for the wants of those whom her womb has borne, whom her
breasts have suckled, for those who look to her for their daily bread
as naturally as man looks to his Creator.

There was nothing poetic in the nature of Mrs. Quiverful. She was
neither a Medea nor a Constance. When angry, she spoke out her anger
in plain words, and in a tone which might have been modulated with
advantage; but she did so, at any rate, without affectation. Now,
without knowing it, she rose to a tragic vein.

"Well, my dear, we are not to have it." Such were the words with
which her ears were greeted when she entered the parlour, still hot
from the kitchen fire. And the face of her husband spoke even more
plainly than his words:--

E'en such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night.

"What!" said she--and Mrs. Siddons could not have put more passion
into a single syllable--"What! Not have i